Texas pornography age verification law deemed unconstitutional by judge.
Federal Judge Blocks Texas Law on Pornographic Websites
A federal judge has made a significant ruling against a Texas law that aimed to enforce age verification and health warnings on pornographic websites. Judge David Ezra, appointed during the Reagan administration, declared HB 1181 unconstitutional and issued a preliminary injunction, stating that the law goes beyond the protection of minors.
Judge Ezra further ruled that the law is vague and would infringe upon Texans’ First Amendment rights. In his ruling, he expressed concerns about the government’s ability to access personal and intimate information through the verification process.
“It runs the risk that the state can monitor when an adult views sexually explicit materials and what kind of websites they visit,” Ezra wrote. “In effect, the law risks forcing individuals to divulge specific details of their sexuality to the state government to gain access to certain speech.”
The judge emphasized that such restrictions have a chilling effect on individuals’ freedom of expression. The law would have required websites with one-third pornographic content to display public health warnings about the psychological dangers of pornography and verify users’ ages through identification or other methods.
Additionally, adult websites would have been obligated to inform users about the potential biological addiction, harm to brain development, desensitization of brain reward circuits, conditioned responses, weakened brain function, and other associated risks of pornography.
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Furthermore, these websites would have been required to display a mental health hotline number and inform users about the potential negative effects on self-esteem, body image, eating disorders, and emotional and mental health. They would also have to alert users about the connection between pornography consumption and the demand for prostitution and child exploitation.
Judge Ezra criticized the law for presenting scientific findings as facts, despite the contested or unsupported nature of some of these claims. Violating companies would have faced a daily fine of $10,000 if it was deemed to be in the public interest, and fines of up to $250,000 per violation if a child accessed sexual material.
The judge referenced previous court decisions, including the striking down of the Child Online Protection Act and the majority of the Communications Decency Act, to support his ruling. He also highlighted concerns about the Texas law’s potential impact on social media platforms and websites providing sex health information.
This ruling is a victory for the Free Speech Coalition, an advocacy organization for the adult industry, which filed a lawsuit against the law. Several adult video companies, including a Romanian company, and an anonymous adult performer who has videos on Pornhub, are also involved in the lawsuit.
It is worth noting that Texas is not the only state to have implemented age restrictions on pornographic websites. Louisiana has also enacted a law requiring age verification for such sites.
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