One of the Worst Industries in the World Gets Its Comeuppance

Opinion|One of the Worst Industries in the World Gets Its Comeuppance

The porn industry just got what it deserved at the Supreme Court.

On the last day of its term, by a 6-to-3 vote, the court delivered a decisive ruling against one of the worst industries in America. It upheld a Texas law that requires pornographic websites to “use reasonable age verification methods” to make sure that their customers are at least 18 years old. The court split on ideological lines, with the six Republican appointees voting to uphold the law and the three Democratic appointees in dissent.

When you see what appears to be a sharp ideological divide on the court, it’s easy to jump to conclusions, to label, for example, the liberals on the court pro-porn compared with the conservatives, but that’s fundamentally wrong. In this case, the most important words from the court came not from Justice Clarence Thomas’s majority opinion but from Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent.

“No one doubts that the distribution of sexually explicit speech to children, of the sort involved here, can cause great harm,” Kagan wrote. “Or to say the same thing in legal terms, no one doubts that states have a compelling interest in shielding children from speech of that kind. What is more, children have no constitutional right to view it.”

There, in plain English, is a powerful declaration — one that should echo in American law and American culture. From left to right, all nine justices agree that pornography can cause great harm to children. All nine agree not merely that children have no constitutional right to view it but also that the state has a compelling interest in blocking their access.

And it’s no wonder. Our nation’s young people are in the midst of a virtual pornography pandemic. The combination of early exposure and the sheer violence and cruelty in so much modern pornography means that children are getting a sex education in exploitation.

Interestingly, the difference between the justices was about not the degree of depravity in porn but rather the precise legal test to use to evaluate the Texas law. The lower court, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, had used the most lenient possible standard, rational-basis review.