Supreme Court Upholds Texas Age-Verification Mandate for Adult Sites

Texas House Bill 1181 requires any site on which at least one-third of the content is sexual material harmful to minors to confirm a visitor's age through government ID or transactional data. The Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for the adult industry, argued the law forces adults to surrender identifying information as the price of accessing constitutionally protected expression, and that strict scrutiny should apply.

Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas concluded that requiring age verification is, in his words, an "ordinary and appropriate means" of enforcing an age limit states may lawfully impose. The Court reasoned that because minors have no right to access this material, and the burden on adults is only the incidental step of proving their age, intermediate scrutiny governs. Under that standard, the majority found Texas's interest in shielding children sufficient and the burden not substantially greater than necessary.

Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented, warning that the majority departed from precedent that had subjected content-based restrictions on adult access to strict scrutiny, and that the privacy costs of routine online identity checks were understated.

The ruling did not bless every age-verification scheme; it turned on the specific structure of H.B. 1181. But by lowering the level of scrutiny, it removed the doctrinal obstacle that had blocked such laws for two decades and set the stage for a wave of enforcement and copycat legislation across the country.