Supreme Court upholds Texas law limiting access to pornography

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a challenge to a Texas law that seeks to limit minors’ access to pornography on the internet, ruling that it does not violate the First Amendment to require people to verify their age through measures like the submission of government-issued IDs.

The vote was 6-3, with the court’s three liberal members in dissent.

The Texas law applies to any commercial website “more than one-third of which is sexual material harmful to minors.” It requires such sites to use one of several methods to verify that users are 18 or older. It does not allow companies to retain the information their users submit. But the challengers said adults would be wary of supplying personal information for fear of identity theft, tracking and extortion.

More than 20 other states have enacted similar laws.

A trade group representing companies that produce sexual materials, along with an adult performer, challenged the Texas law, saying that it violated the First Amendment right of adults.

Judge David Alan Ezra of the U.S. District Court in Austin blocked the law, saying it would have a chilling effect on speech protected by the First Amendment.

By verifying information through government identification, the law allows the government “to peer into the most intimate and personal aspects of people’s lives,” wrote Ezra, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan.

“It runs the risk that the state can monitor when an adult views sexually explicit materials and what kind of websites they visit,” he continued. “In effect, the law risks forcing individuals to divulge specific details of their sexuality to the state government to gain access to certain speech.”

A divided three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. “The age-verification requirement is rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in preventing minors’ access to pornography,” Judge Jerry E. Smith, who was also appointed by Reagan, wrote for the majority. He was joined by Judge Jennifer W. Elrod, who was appointed by President George W. Bush.

Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham, another Reagan appointee, dissented, saying that the law chills free speech rights.

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.