Supreme Court denies porn industry’s request to halt Texas age verification law

The Supreme Court rejected an emergency plea from the pornography industry to stop the enforcement of a Texas age verification law imposed on pornography sites, allowing the Lone Star State to continue the policy it enacted to protect children.

The order from Justice Samuel Alito came down Tuesday without explanation or a public dissent, but it left in place the law that prompted Pornhub, one of the most trafficked pornography sites in the world, to cease operation in Texas.

In mid-April, adult industry trade organization Free Speech Coalition joined forces with the American Civil Liberties Union to ask the Supreme Court to stop the law, arguing that the law aimed at stopping children from viewing pornography actually harms the rights of adults.

The pornography industry said the laws violated the First Amendment rights of adults by asking them to submit personal information to use the pornography websites.

“Specifically, the act requires adults to comply with intrusive age verification measures that mandate the submission of personally identifying information over the internet in order to access websites containing sensitive and intimate content,” the industry wrote in court filings.

The appeal will continue to be weighed by the full court, but the law will remain in effect as that appeal progresses. The Texas law carries a $10,000 fine per violation, which could be raised to $250,000 for a minor.

In Texas filings, state Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-TX) said the law “simply requires the pornography industry that makes billions of dollars from peddling smut to take commercially reasonable steps to ensure that those who access the material are adults.”

A federal judge had blocked the law initially, a move that barred both age verification and health warning requirements, but the decision was reversed in March by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. In the circuit court’s decision, a divided panel upheld the age verification law but maintained that requiring websites to publish health warnings they disagreed with violated their rights.

Those warnings included messages that pornography is addictive, negatively affects mental health and development, and increases prostitution and child exploitation.

Mike Stabile, spokesperson for Free Speech Coalition, said the group views the case as a fight for “the right to access the internet without intrusive government oversight.”

“While the Supreme Court has denied our application to stay the Fifth Circuit’s decision upholding age verification requirements in Texas, our petition for full merits review before the Supreme Court remains pending,” Stabile said. “The ruling by the Fifth Circuit remains in direct opposition to decades of Supreme Court precedent, and we remain hopeful that the Supreme Court will grant our petition for certiorari and reaffirm its lengthy line of cases applying strict scrutiny to content-based restrictions on speech like those in the Texas statute we’ve challenged.”

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Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, Utah, and Virginia all have similar age verification laws, and Pornhub has stopped operation in many of those states as well.

The Washington Examiner reached out to the ACLU for comment.