A US district judge has recently blocked enforcement of a Texas law requiring pornographic websites to verify a user’s age.
The decision by U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra came just one day before the law, H.B. 1181, was scheduled to take effect. Pornhub and other pornographic websites, along with the Free Speech Coalition, initiated a legal challenge against Texas on August 11, asserting that the law infringed upon various constitutional rights, including those guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Ezra stated, “The state has a legitimate goal in protecting children from sexually explicit material online,” 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 lawsuit is adequately litigated to begin the enforcement.
H.B. 1181 aimed to empower the Texas attorney general to initiate legal action against adult content-hosting websites, seeking damages exceeding $3 million annually if these platforms failed to verify users’ ages using government-issued identification before granting access.
Additionally, the law mandated that adult websites prominently display a “Texas Health and Human Services Warning” in 14-point font and enforce user age verification.
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.”
Notably, Texas is not the first state to adopt age verification requirements for online adult content. Louisiana implemented similar age restrictions in January, requiring users to submit a copy of a government-issued ID before gaining access to pornographic websites. Numerous other states have also passed comparable legislation, including Virginia, Mississippi, Utah, Arkansas, and Montana.
