Supreme Court’s Porn Ruling Continues the Conservative Revolution
In upholding a Texas law requiring age verification to access porn websites, the court overturned a precedent that stood for more than two decades.
This isn’t enough anymore.
Photographer: Leon Neal/Getty Images
In a landmark 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court upheld age-verification requirements for accessing online pornography sites, effectively overturning a precedent that had stood for more than 20 years. Alongside its January decision on TikTok, the ruling marks a new era in the court’s online First Amendment jurisprudence: the justices are increasingly willing to uphold government suppression of free speech for policy reasons.
The opinion in the case, Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, was written by Justice Clarence Thomas, who, until recently, was something of a free speech absolutist. Thomas made it extremely clear that his goal was to find a way to uphold the Texas age-verification law at issue, regardless of precedent.