A Texas law that requires age verification on porn sites is unconstitutional

The Injunction of H.B. 1181 to Protect Minors from Viewing Sexually Explicit Material in a State with Affirmative Identifyation

If a person has to affirmatively identify themselves to be allowed to view gay material in Texas it will be hard to do so, the ruling said.

As Ezra notes, Texas still hasn’t repealed a law against sodomy, making it particularly fraught to hand over identification for something like a gay porn site. “Given Texas’s ongoing criminalization of homosexual intercourse, it is apparent that people who wish to view homosexual material will be profoundly chilled from doing so if they must first affirmatively identify themselves to the state,” the ruling says.

Ezra said the age verification component in House Bill 1181, signed by Gov. Greg Abbott in June, “is constitutionally problematic because it deters adults’ access to legal sexually explicit material, far beyond the interest of protecting minors.”

The injunction is related to the criticisms of online age verification and the chilling effect it has on people.

The state defends H.B. 1181 for protecting Minors, but it’s not tailored to this purpose. It contains important exemptions, including material most likely to be a gateway to pornography use, that are intended to try to prevent children from accessing pornography.

The ruling states that social media sites would be exempt from the age restrictions because they do not meet the one-third sexual material standard. It doesn’t mean that children can view porn on the internet, for example on sites such as Tumblr andInstagram that are dedicated to explicit sexual content. Running image searches on search engines also wouldn’t be restricted under the law.

A federal judge has blocked a Texas law requiring age verification and a health warning for viewing pornographic websites, a day before the law was set to take effect.

The judge said the “state provides virtually no evidence that this is an effective method to combat children’s access to sexual material” and that the warnings include language that most minors would not understand.

The warnings state “Texas Health and Human Services”, but it’s not clear if the Texas Health and Human Services Commission has announced any findings.

porn sites must post warnings about the dangers of viewing porn as well as a number to a hotline for people with mental health and substance abuse issues, among other requirements, according to the law.

The Fifth Circuit U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana Appeals ruled against State Attorney General’s Enforcement of the Fourth Amendment

State monitoring concerns are only one of the reasons that the deterrent effects of exposing sensitive information through potential leaks or hacks are listed in the ruling.

The judge’s ruling prevents the state attorney general, the defendant in the case, from enforcing the law. The attorney general’s office has filed a notice of appeal with the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Louisiana.