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The law, meant to shield minors from sexual materials on the internet by requiring adults to prove they are 18, was challenged on First Amendment grounds.
Jan. 15, 2025, 1:44 p.m. ET
Several members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed deeply skeptical of a challenge to a Texas law that seeks to limit minors’ access to pornography, peppering a lawyer for the challengers with exceptionally hostile questions.
The lawyer, Derek L. Shaffer, said the law violated the First Amendment by requiring age verification measures like the submission of government-issued IDs. He said parents could protect their children by using content-filtering software.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. was incredulous. “Do you know a lot of parents who are more tech savvy than their 15-year-old children?” He added that “there’s a huge volume of evidence that filtering doesn’t work.”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who has seven children, said “kids can get online porn through gaming systems, tablets, phones, computers.”
She added, “Content filtering for all those different devices, I can say from personal experience, is difficult to keep up with.”
Much of the argument concerned whether the appeals court had erred in using a relaxed form of judicial scrutiny to block the law. Several justices indicated that a more demanding standard applied even as they suggested that the Texas law satisfied it.
