Last week, the Free Speech Coalition, a group representing the adult entertainment industry, filed an application asking the Supreme Court to block a Texas law requiring age verification to access porn sites, pending a petition with the court. The group claims that the Texas law violates the First Amendment rights of adults by burdening their access to protected speech and unreasonably invading their privacy.
Texas is one of a handful of states that have passed a law requiring that sites hosting explicit content verify that all users are adults. While the exact methods of this verification vary from legislation to legislation, the Texas law requires individuals to "provide digital identification" or "comply with a commercial age verification system that verifies age using" a government ID or "a commercially reasonable method that relies on public or private transactional data to verify the age of an individual."
