One judge dissents, saying Texas law “limits adults’ access to protected speech.”

Texas can enforce a law requiring age-verification systems on porn websites, the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled Thursday. The appeals court vacated an injunction against the law’s age-verification requirement but said that Texas cannot enforce a provision requiring porn websites to “display health warnings about the effects of the consumption of pornography.”

In a 2-1 decision, judges ruled that “the age-verification requirement is rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in preventing minors’ access to pornography. Therefore, the age-verification requirement does not violate the First Amendment.”

The Texas law was challenged by the owners of Pornhub and other adult websites and an adult-industry lobby group called the Free Speech Coalition. “We disagree strenuously with the analysis of the Court majority,” the Free Speech Coalition said. “As the dissenting opinion by Judge [Patrick] Higginbotham makes clear, this ruling violates decades of precedent from the Supreme Court.”

  • Flying Squid
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    fedilink
    114 months ago

    Tons of businesses rely on VPNs. There is no way they will be targeted.

    • @[email protected]
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      fedilink
      84 months ago

      I think the commenter means commercial anonymizing VPN services (no-log ones), not the network protocol itself