A United States district judge blocked enforcement of a Texas law requiring pornographic websites to verify a user’s age, a sign of trouble for the wave of state laws restricting access to pornographic content.
U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra granted a preliminary injunction blocking H.B. 1181, Texas’s newly passed age verification law, a day before it would go into effect. Pornhub, alongside several other pornography sites and the Free Speech Coalition, filed a suit against Texas on Aug. 11, alleging that the law violated several constitutional rights, including those guaranteed by the First Amendment.
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“The state has a legitimate goal in protecting children from sexually explicit material online,” Ezra wrote, but that “does not negate this Court’s burden to ensure that the laws passed in its pursuit comport with established First Amendment doctrine.”
Ezra also agreed with the Free Speech Coalition’s suggestion that Texas could achieve its goal of limiting child access to pornography through other tools, such as “parental filters.”
The state must wait until the lawsuit is adequately litigated to begin enforcement.
H.B. 1181 would allow the Texas attorney general to sue adult content-hosting websites for more than $3 million a year if they do not verify user ages with a government I.D. before giving them access. The law also requires adult websites to display a “Texas Health and Human Services Warning” in 14-point font alongside requiring users to verify their age. This warning states, “Pornography is potentially biologically addictive, is proven to harm human brain development, desensitizes brain reward circuits, increases conditioned responses, and weakens brain function.”
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Texas is not the first state to adopt age verification requirements. Louisiana implemented age restrictions early in January, requiring users to provide a copy of a government-issued I.D. before being allowed access to pornographic websites. Several other states passed copycat bills, including Virginia, Mississippi, Utah, Arkansas, and Montana.
The Texas attorney general’s office did not respond to requests for comment from the Washington Examiner.
