from the seems-bad dept
The Supreme Court docket this morning took a chainsaw to the First Modification on the web, and the influence goes to be felt for many years going ahead. Within the FSC v. Paxton case, the Court docket upheld the very problematic fifth Circuit ruling that age verification on-line is appropriate below the First Modification, regardless of a number of earlier Supreme Court docket rulings that stated the other.
Justice Thomas wrote the 6-3 majority opinion, with Justice Kagan writing the dissent (joined by Sotomayor and Jackson). The sensible impact: states can now drive web sites to gather authorities IDs from anybody desirous to view grownup content material, creating an enormous chilling impact on protected speech and opening the door to a lot broader on-line speech restrictions.
Thomas completed this by pulling off some exceptional doctrinal sleight of hand. He ignored the Court docket’s personal precedents in Ashcroft v. ACLU by pretending on-line age verification is rather like checking ID at a brick-and-mortar retailer (it’s not), utilized a weaker “intermediate scrutiny” customary as an alternative of the “strict scrutiny” that content-based speech restrictions usually require, and—most audaciously—invented a completely new class of “partially protected” speech that conveniently removes First Modification protections precisely when the federal government desires to burden them. As Justice Kagan’s scathing dissent makes clear, that is constitutional regulation by result-oriented reasoning, not principled evaluation.
As we’ve famous, in instances like Ashcroft v. ACLU and Brown v. EMA, the Supreme Court docket had lengthy established that states couldn’t simply throw round imprecise claims of “dangerous to minors” to disregard the First Modification, or on the very least to decrease the usual of scrutiny from “strict scrutiny” to “intermediate scrutiny” (although not, as Ken Paxton hoped, all the best way all the way down to “rational foundation.”).
The actual hazard right here isn’t simply Texas’s age verification regulation—it’s that Thomas has handed each state legislature a roadmap for circumventing the First Modification on-line. His reasoning that “the web has modified” and that intermediate scrutiny suffices for content-based restrictions might be cited in numerous future instances focusing on on-line speech. Count on age verification necessities to be tried for social media platforms (defending children from “dangerous” political content material), for information websites (stopping minors from accessing “disturbing” protection), and for any on-line speech that makes ethical authorities uncomfortable.
And sure, to be clear, the bulk opinion seeks to restrict this simply to content material deemed “obscene” to keep away from such issues, but it surely’s written so broadly as to not less than open up challenges alongside these strains.
Thomas’s invention of “partially protected” speech, that one way or the other means you possibly can burden these for which it’s protected, is especially insidious as a result of it’s infinitely expandable. Any time the federal government desires to burden speech, it could merely argue that the burden is constructed into the best itself—making First Modification safety vanish precisely when it’s wanted most. This isn’t constitutional interpretation; it’s constitutional gerrymandering.
The conservative justices might imagine they’re simply defending youngsters from pornography, however they’ve really written a permission slip for the regulatory state to attempt to management on-line expression. The web that emerges from this determination will look rather more just like the one authoritarian governments favor: the place each click on requires identification, the place any viewpoint might be age-gated, and the place anonymity turns into a luxurious solely the highly effective can afford. Thomas’s “starch” in constitutional requirements? It simply received bleached out of existence.
Texas, like many States, prohibits the distribution of sexually specific content material to youngsters. Tex. Penal Code Ann. §43.24(b) (West 2016). However, though that prohibition could also be efficient towards brick-and-mortar shops, it has proved difficult to implement towards on-line content material. In an effort to deal with this drawback, Texas enacted H. B. 1181, Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Ann. §129B.001 et seq. (West Cum. Supp. 2024), which requires sure business web sites that publish sexually specific content material to confirm the ages of their guests. This requirement furthers the lawful finish of stopping youngsters from accessing sexually specific content material. However, it additionally burdens grownup guests of those web sites, who all agree have a First Modification proper to entry not less than among the content material that the web sites publish. We granted certiorari to resolve whether or not these burdens seemingly render H. B. 1181 unconstitutional below the Free Speech Clause of the First Modification. We maintain that they don’t. The facility to require age verification is inside a State’s authority to forestall youngsters from accessing sexually specific content material. H. B. 1181 is a constitutionally permissible train of that authority.
There’s a whole lot of throat clearing within the majority opinion relating to the federal government’s energy to dam entry to “obscene” materials, and the place it could restrict entry by youngsters to sexually specific materials. That’s well-worn territory. The difficulty right here is that with on-line age verification you have got some very vital issues—which the Supreme Court docket used to acknowledge: the burden on adults of getting to show their age (and relinquish vital privateness in doing so) in addition to the truth that the tech sucks and incessantly will get stuff improper.
However Thomas appears to behave as if it is a easy extension of legal guidelines that prohibit shops from promoting grownup magazines to children.
Obscenity isn’t any exception to the widespread follow of requiring proof of age to train age-restricted rights. The New York statute upheld in Ginsberg required age verification: It permitted a vendor who bought sexual materials to a minor to boost “‘trustworthy mistake’” as to age as an affirmative protection, however provided that the vendor had made “‘an inexpensive bona fide try to determine the true age of [the] minor.’” 390 U. S., at 644. Most States to today additionally require age verification for in-person purchases of sexual materials. And, petitioners concede that an in-person age verification requirement is a “conventional type of regulation” that’s “virtually absolutely” constitutional. Tr. of Oral Arg. 17.
The information of Ginsberg illustrate why age verification, as a sensible matter, is critical for an efficient prohibition on minors accessing age-inappropriate sexual content material. The statute in that case prohibited the realizing sale of sexual content material to a minor below the age of 17. 390 U. S., at 633. The defendant was convicted of knowingly promoting a pornographic journal to a 16-year-old. Id., at 631. However, more often than not, it’s virtually not possible to tell apart a 16-yearold from a 17-year-old by sight alone. Thus, had the vendor in Ginsberg not had an obligation to confirm the age of the purchaser, he seemingly might have prevented legal responsibility just by asserting ignorance as to the purchaser’s age. Solely an age-verification requirement can guarantee compliance with an age-based restriction.
Thomas then claims that “The necessity for age verification on-line is even better” and even cites Brown v. EMA (which discovered California’s regulation stopping the sale of violent video video games unconstitutional) to one way or the other… help the argument right here?
Thomas then falsely claims that the regulation doesn’t regulate the speech of adults, which clearly goes towards the opinion in Ashcroft.
As a result of H. B. 1181 merely requires proof of age to entry content material that’s obscene to minors, it doesn’t straight regulate the protected speech of adults…. On its face, the statute regulates solely speech that’s obscene to minors. That speech is unprotected to the extent the State seeks solely to confirm age. And, the statute can simply “be justified irrespective of the [protected] content material of the regulated speech,” as a result of its obvious goal is solely to forestall minors, who don’t have any First Modification proper to entry speech that’s obscene to them, from doing so.
That’s authorized fiction dressed up as statutory interpretation. Age verification necessities completely burden grownup entry to protected speech—that’s the whole level of difficult them.
The bulk admits that there’s some First Modification concern right here, however argues that it doesn’t require strict scrutiny… partially as a result of that may make all age verification legal guidelines suspect, even these for brick-and-mortar shops, which Thomas makes use of as a type of “gotcha” to help his argument that it’s advantageous on-line as nicely:
Making use of the extra demanding strict-scrutiny customary would name into query the validity of all age-verification necessities, even longstanding requbirements for brickand-mortar shops. However, as petitioners acknowledge, after Ginsberg, no severe query concerning the constitutionality of in-person age-verification necessities for obscenity to minors has arisen. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 43 (acknowledging that they “don’t know of any . . . problem being introduced” to an age-verification requirement for “brick-and-mortar shops”). Petitioners insist that their proposed rule wouldn’t name into query these “conventional” necessities, as a result of such necessities would “virtually absolutely fulfill” strict scrutiny. Id., at 17. Additionally they contend {that a} sufficiently tailor-made on-line age-verification requirement (though not Texas’s) might fulfill strict scrutiny too. Id., at 6–8. However, if we aren’t to compromise “‘[t]he “starch” in our constitutional requirements,’” we can not share petitioners’ confidence.
Thomas is doing precisely what he rails towards in different contexts: turning the First Modification right into a mushy balancing check as an alternative of a transparent constitutional command. The one distinction right here is that sexual content material apparently makes him squeamish sufficient to desert his traditional textualist ideas.
To get across the ruling in Ashcroft, he claims that COPA (the regulation it invalidated) was really a ban on content material dangerous to minors, at the same time as he ultimately admits that COPA (just like the Texas regulation at problem) had an age-verification requirement that may permit such content material to be revealed. So what’s the distinction? The bulk claims that with COPA the age-verification side was an affirmative protection, whereas with the Texas HB 1181 regulation, it’s a mandate. To me, that makes the Texas regulation much more of an issue and a burden, however Thomas reads it the opposite manner:
To make certain, COPA established an age-verification protection. Id., at 662. However, as a result of it did so solely as an affirmative protection, COPA nonetheless operated as a ban on the general public posting of fabric that’s obscene to minors. See id., at 661–662 (citing 47 U. S. C. §§231(a)(1), (c)(1)). This was so as a result of an indictment want solely “alleg[e] the mandatory components of an offense”; it needn’t “anticipate affirmative defenses.” United States v. Sisson, 399 U. S. 267, 287–288 (1970). Below COPA, the Authorities thus remained free to carry legal costs towards any lined one who publicly posted speech that was obscene to minors, even when he had absolutely carried out compliant age-verification procedures.
Whereas the bulk opinion is written to recommend it solely applies on to “pornographic” content material deemed “obscene to youngsters,” it’s actually taking an axe to the elemental ruling within the Reno case (which tossed out many of the Communications Decency Act) and Ashcroft. Thomas claims that is okay as a result of the web is completely different now:
Within the quarter century for the reason that factual report closed in Ashcroft II, the web has expanded exponentially. In 1999, solely two out of 5 American households had dwelling web entry. Dept. of Commerce, Census Bureau, House Computer systems and Web Use in the US: Aug. 2000, p. 2 (2001). Practically all these households used a desktop pc or laptop computer to connect with the web, and most used a dial-up connection. Dept. of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Admin., A Nation On-line: Coming into the Broadband Age 1, 5 (2004). Connecting via dial-up got here with vital limitations: Dial-up is way slower than a contemporary broadband connection, and since dial-up relied on the house’s cellphone line, many households couldn’t use the web and make or obtain cellphone calls on the identical time. See Inline Connection Corp. v. AOL Time Warner Inc., 302 F. Supp. 2nd 307, 311 (Del. 2004). And, “video-on-demand” was largely only a notion that figures like “Invoice Gates and Al Gore rhapsodize[d] about”; “most Netizens would [have] be[en] pleased with a system quick sufficient to view static photographs with out ready an age.” Kennedy 493–494.
In distinction, in 2024, 95 % of American teenagers had entry to a smartphone, permitting many to entry the web at virtually any time and place. M. Faverio & O. Sidoti, Pew Analysis Heart, Teenagers, Social Media and Expertise 2024, p. 19. Ninety-three % of teenagers reported utilizing the web a number of instances per day, and watching movies is amongst their commonest actions on-line. Id., at 4–5, 20. The content material simply accessible to adolescents on-line consists of huge libraries of pornographic movies. As an example, in 2019, Pornhub, one of many web sites concerned on this case, revealed 1.36 million hours—or over 150 years—of latest content material. App. 177. Many of those readily accessible movies painting males raping and bodily assaulting girls—a far cry from the nonetheless photographs that made up the majority of on-line pornography within the Nineteen Nineties. See N. Kristof, The Youngsters of Pornhub, N. Y. Occasions, Dec. 6, 2020, p. SR4. The Court docket in Reno and Ashcroft II couldn’t have conceived of those developments, a lot much less conclusively resolve how States might deal with them.
The bulk claims that these rulings “don’t stop to be precedential just because expertise has modified so dramatically” however that they are often restricted as a result of so many individuals have the web.
That argument is bonkers and harmful. If “extra individuals use expertise now” justifies weakening constitutional protections, then each digital proper is up for grabs. That line will now present up in briefings throughout the nation as states argue that widespread web adoption one way or the other diminishes the First Modification’s drive on-line.
It’s deceptive within the excessive to imagine that Reno and Ashcroft II spoke to the circumstances of this case just because they each handled “the web” because it existed within the Nineteen Nineties. The suitable customary of scrutiny to use on this case is a tough query that no prior determination of this Court docket has squarely addressed.
That’s a shot throughout the bow of free speech on-line. It’s Justice Thomas saying it’s “open season” to hunt to manage speech on-line.
The opinion then spends a whole lot of time explaining why intermediate scrutiny is the best customary, and never strict scrutiny (as FSC needed) or “rational foundation” (as Texas needed). This appears like Thomas making an attempt to separate the newborn (which, I ought to remind you, kills the newborn) and pretending to compromise. It’s not a compromise. It’s a full frontal assault on web speech.
The dissent, by Kagan, understands this problematic outcome:
The bulk’s opinion concluding on the contrary is, to be frank, confused. The opinion, to begin with, is at struggle with itself. Elements recommend that the First Modification performs no function right here—that as a result of Texas’s regulation works via age verification mandates, the First Modification is irrelevant. See ante, at 13–18. However even the bulk ultimately provides up that ghost. As, actually, it should. H. B. 1181’s necessities intrude with—or, in First Modification jargon, burden—the entry adults must protected speech: Some people will forgo that speech due to the necessity to establish themselves to an internet site (and perhaps, from there, to the world) as a shopper of sexually specific expression. However nonetheless, the bulk proposes, that burden calls for solely intermediate scrutiny as a result of it arises from an “incidental” restriction, on condition that Texas’s statute makes use of age verification to forestall minors from viewing the speech. See ante, at 13, 18–19. Besides that’s improper—nothing like what we’ve got ever understood as an incidental restraint for First Modification functions. Texas’s regulation defines speech by content material and tells individuals entitled to view that speech that they have to incur a price to take action. That’s, below our First Modification regulation, a direct (not incidental) regulation of speech based mostly on its content material—which calls for strict scrutiny.
Kagan takes problem with Thomas’ declare that this case is one way or the other completely different from the present precedents:
The bulk’s try to tell apart our 4 precedents saying simply that rounds out the checklist of its errors. Based on the bulk, all of these choices concerned prohibiting slightly than merely burdening adults’ entry to obscene-forchildren speech. See ante, at 21. However that isn’t true. And in any occasion it could not matter: The First Modification prevents making speech laborious, in addition to banning it outright. So on all accounts the bulk’s rationale craters.
The bulk is just not shy about why it has adopted these special-for-the-occasion, difficult-to-decipher guidelines. It thinks they’re wanted to get to what it considers the best outcome: giving Texas permission to implement its statute. See ante, at 19–21. However Texas shouldn’t obtain that permission if it could obtain its aim as to minors whereas interfering much less with the speech decisions of adults. And if it can not, then Texas’s statute would survive strict scrutiny, given the apparent significance of its aim. For that motive, the bulk’s evaluation is as pointless as it’s untrue to the regulation.
The dissent additionally calls out the very actual burdens that on-line age-verification creates that brick-and-mortar age verification doesn’t. This can be a level that Thomas successfully ignores:
Recall how the statute works. To enter a lined web site—with all of the protected speech simply described—a person should confirm his age by utilizing both a “government-issued identification” like a driver’s license or “transactional information” related to issues like a job or mortgage. §§129B.001(7), 129B.003(b)(2); see ante, at 2–3. For the would-be shopper of sexually specific supplies, that requirement is a deterrent: It imposes what our First Modification choices usually name a “chilling impact.” E.g., Individuals for Prosperity Basis v. Bonta, 594 U. S. 595, 606 (2021). It isn’t, contra the bulk, like having to flash ID to enter a membership. See ante, at 14–15. It’s turning over details about your self and your viewing habits—respecting speech many discover repulsive—to an internet site operator, after which to . . . who is aware of? The operator would possibly promote the data; the operator may be hacked or subpoenaed. We acknowledged the issue in a case involving sexual materials on cable TV: Comparable calls for, we determined, would “prohibit viewing by subscribers who concern for his or her reputations ought to the operator, advertently or inadvertently, disclose the checklist of those that want to watch the ‘patently offensive’ channel.” Denver Space Ed. Telecommunications Consortium, Inc. v. FCC, 518 U. S. 727, 754 (1996). The web context can solely enhance the concern. And the Texas regulation imposes prices not simply on potential customers, however on web site operators too. They have to both implement a system costing (the District Court docket discovered) not less than $40,000 for each 100,000 verifications, or else pay penalties of $10,000 per day.
The dissent particularly highlights how this case was almost an identical to Ashcroft, and the bulk is solely making up random causes to faux it’s completely different. Amusingly, Kagan cites Thomas’s concurrence in Ashcroft to make that time.
And the denouement: The statute the Court docket addressed in Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 542 U. S. 656 (2004), was a near-twin of Texas’s. The Baby On-line Safety Act (COPA) prohibited business entities from posting on the web content material “dangerous to minors.” Id., at 661 (quoting 47 U. S. C. §231(a)(1)). And similar to H. B. 1181, that statute outlined the lined materials by adapting the Miller obscenity check for youngsters—thus making a class of obscene-for-children speech. See 542 U. S., at 661– 662; supra, at 4. So too, COPA made the adoption of an age verification system essential. It did so by offering an affirmative protection to any entity that verified age via an “grownup private identification quantity” or comparable mechanism earlier than granting entry to the posted supplies. Ashcroft, 542 U. S., at 662. So, as in H. B. 1181, if the poster verified age, no legal responsibility might connect. How, then, to research such a statute? The Court docket seen the issue because it had in prior instances: COPA, although directed at preserving sexually specific supplies from youngsters, “was prone to burden some speech that’s protected for adults.” Id., at 665. And due to that “content-based restriction[],” the Court docket wanted to use strict scrutiny. Id., at 660, 665, 670. The Authorities thus needed to present that “the proposed alternate options won’t be as efficient because the challenged statute.” Id., at 665. In brief, Ashcroft adhered to the view that “‘the governmental curiosity in defending youngsters from dangerous supplies’ doesn’t ‘justify an unnecessarily broad suppression of speech addressed to adults.’” Lorillard Tobacco Co. v. Reilly, 533 U. S. 525, 581 (2001) (THOMAS, J., concurring partially and concurring in judgment) (quoting Reno, 521 U. S., at 875).
Kagan then calls out how the bulk ruling creates a completely new class of First Modification speech: “partially protected” speech.
The bulk tries to flee that conclusion with a maneuver discovered nowhere on this planet of First Modification doctrine. It seems, the bulk says, that the First Modification solely “partially protects” the speech in query: The “speech is unprotected to the extent the State seeks solely to confirm age.” Ante, at 18, 29, n. 12 (emphasis deleted); see ante, at 28 (the speech is “unprotected to the extent that the State imposes solely an age-verification requirement”). Which means, the speech is unprotected to the extent that the State is imposing the very burden below evaluation. Or stated one other manner, the best of adults to view the speech has the burden of age verification constructed proper in. That’s handy, if altogether round. Ultimately, the bulk’s evaluation reduces to this: Requiring age verification doesn’t straight burden adults’ speech rights as a result of adults don’t have any proper to be free from the burden of age verification. Gerrymander the best to include the burden, and the important conclusion follows. If solely different First Modification instances had been really easy!
As for Thomas’s argument that “the web is completely different now,” nicely, Kagan factors out that will make the information of a case completely different, however ought to by no means change the extent of scrutiny:
That leaves solely the bulk’s declare—once more mistaken— that the web has modified an excessive amount of to observe our precedents’ lead. See ante, at 25–27. In fact expertise has developed, each swiftly and absolutely. And that truth would possibly matter (as certainly the burden/ban distinction would possibly) to how strict scrutiny applies—and notably as to if the State can present it has adopted the least speech-restrictive means to attain its aim. Ashcroft explicitly acknowledged that time: It thought that, given the tempo of technological change, the District Court docket would possibly make a special determination than it had 5 years earlier about whether or not there have been “much less restrictive different[s]” to COPA. 542 U. S., at 671–672. To that extent—however to that extent solely—the bulk is correct that Ashcroft was “self-consciously slender and factbound.” Ante, at 26. Not, although, as to the extent of scrutiny. On that query, the Court docket was unequivocal that as a result of COPA was “a content-based speech restriction,” it should fulfill the strict-scrutiny check. 542 U. S., at 665; see supra, at 8–9, and n. 1. For that was a matter of primary First Modification precept. And as this Court docket has understood: “Regardless of the challenges of making use of the Structure to ever-advancing expertise, the fundamental ideas of the First Modification don’t fluctuate.” Moody v. NetChoice, LLC, 603 U. S. 707, 733 (2024) (quoting Brown v. Leisure Retailers Assn., 564 U. S. 786, 790 (2011)); see TikTok Inc. v. Garland, 604 U. S. ___, ___ (2025) (GORSUCH, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 2) (“[E]ven as instances and applied sciences change, ‘the precept of the best to free speech is all the time the identical’” (quoting Abrams v. United States, 250 U. S. 616, 628 (1919) (Holmes, J., dissenting))).
And, as Kagan concludes, the bulk is now admitting that Texas regulation is just not the least burdensome strategy to attain this outcome, and that’s looks as if an actual drawback for speech:
The final a part of the bulk’s opinion—plus a few of its footnotes—reveals why all this issues. In concluding that H. B. 1181 passes constitutional muster, the bulk states (appropriately) that below intermediate scrutiny Texas needn’t present it has chosen the least speech-restrictive manner of engaging in its aim. See ante, at 32. Even when there have been a mechanism that (1) as nicely or higher prevented minors’ entry to the lined supplies and (2) imposed a lesser burden on adults’ means to view that expression, Texas might spurn that “superior” technique. Ante, at 34. Likewise, the bulk—as a result of it’s making use of a extra forgiving customary—can ignore a bunch of questions on how far H. B. 1181 burdens protected expression. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 67–68. Within the advantageous print of two footnotes, the bulk declares that it has no have to discover (1) whether or not H. B. 1181 requires lined web sites to demand age verification for all their content material or just for the subset that’s obscene for minors; (2) whether or not H. B. 1181 requires that lined speech be obscene “solely to a minor (together with a toddler)” or “to all minors (together with 17-year-olds)”; and (3) whether or not H. B. 1181 permits web sites to make use of “newer biometric strategies of age verification, like face scans,” that pose fewer privateness considerations than submitting authorities ID and transactional information. Ante, at 17, n. 7 (emphasis in unique); ante, at 34, n. 14. The bulk explains that even when Texas answered every of these questions in a maximally burdensome manner—requiring authorities ID to view speech that’s protected even for youngsters as a result of one-third of the web site’s contents are obscene for two-year-olds—H. B. 1181 can go ahead. And once more, that’s true even when Texas has a much less burdensome manner of “equally or more practical[ly]” reaching its goal….
I might demand Texas present extra, to make sure it isn’t undervaluing the curiosity in free expression. Texas can after all take measures to forestall minors from viewing obscene-for-children speech. But when a scheme apart from H. B. 1181 can simply as nicely accomplish that goal and higher shield adults’ First Modification freedoms, then Texas ought to must undertake it (or not less than show some good motive to not). A State could not care a lot about safeguarding adults’ entry to sexually specific speech; a State could even favor to curtail these supplies for everybody. Many affordable individuals, in any case, view the speech at problem right here as ugly and dangerous for any viewers. However the First Modification protects these sexually specific supplies, for each grownup.
The one sliver of potential “excellent news” is that almost all opinion focuses so closely on how intermediate scrutiny applies solely as a result of some grownup content material is “obscene to minors,” making it unprotected by the First Modification, which means that this ruling is probably not as useful to those that want to impose age verification necessities on all social media, which might essentially cowl loads of absolutely protected speech. However Thomas’s majority opinion is written in a way that sadly will permit politicians across the nation to relitigate these questions that had as soon as been seen as very clear and settled regulation.
Kagan’s ultimate line cuts to the center of what Thomas’s majority has deserted: the precept that constitutional rights don’t disappear simply because the federal government finds the speech distasteful or as a result of expertise makes enforcement more difficult. The First Modification was designed to guard unpopular speech—speech that makes authorities uncomfortable, speech that challenges prevailing ethical views, speech that highly effective individuals would favor to suppress.
By creating his “partially protected” speech doctrine and blessing age verification burdens that may have been unthinkable a decade in the past, Thomas has primarily advised state governments: discover the best procedural mechanism, and you may burden any on-line speech you dislike. At present it’s pornography. Tomorrow will probably be political content material that legislators deem “dangerous to minors,” information protection which may “disturb” youngsters, or social media discussions that don’t align with official viewpoints.
The conservatives could have gotten their victory towards on-line grownup content material, however they’ve handed each future administration—federal and state—a blueprint for dismantling digital free speech. They had been so afraid of nudity that they broke the Structure. The remainder of us might be dwelling with the implications for many years.
Filed Below: 1st modification, age verification, burdens, clarence thomas, elena kagan, hb 1181, intermediate scrutiny, web, ken paxton, obscenity, on-line speech, supreme court docket, texas, consider the youngsters
Firms: free speech coalition
