On June 27, 2025, the US Supreme Court upheld Texas’s age-verification law for porn sites by a 6-3 vote [1]. The case, Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, answered the main constitutional question hanging over the state laws that require adult sites to check ID, and it set the test courts now use to review them [1].
The short version: states may require adults to prove their age before viewing material that is obscene for minors, and courts will review those requirements with a middle level of scrutiny rather than the strictest one [1].
What did Texas’s HB 1181 require?
Texas passed HB 1181 in 2023. The governor signed it on June 12, 2023, and it was due to take effect on September 1, 2023 [3]. It covers commercial entities that publish material on a website where more than a third of the material is sexual material harmful to minors [2]. Those sites must verify that each visitor is 18 or older, either with digital identification or through a commercial age-verification system that checks government-issued ID or public or private transactional data, a term the law defines to include mortgage, education and employment records [2]. The site and any outside verifier may not keep the visitor’s identifying information [2]. The Attorney General enforces the law and can seek up to $10,000 for each day a site is out of compliance, plus up to $250,000 if a minor sees covered material as a result [1]. Texas conceded that it had no state digital ID, and the Court treated ID checks and transactional data as the methods in play [1]. The law also required state-written health warnings on covered sites [4].
How did the case reach the Supreme Court?
The Free Speech Coalition, an adult-industry trade association, sued the Texas Attorney General along with several site operators and a performer, arguing that the law was unconstitutional on its face [1]. On August 31, 2023, the day before the effective date, a federal district court blocked the whole law, applying strict scrutiny [4]. Texas appealed, and the Fifth Circuit paused that injunction while it considered the case [4].
On March 7, 2024, the Fifth Circuit vacated the injunction as to age verification, holding that only rational-basis review applied, but kept the injunction against the health warnings [4]. Judge Higginbotham dissented in part; he would have applied strict scrutiny [1]. The Supreme Court declined to put the Fifth Circuit’s ruling on hold on April 30, 2024, agreed to hear the case on July 2, 2024, and heard argument on January 15, 2025 [5]. The federal government filed a brief supporting vacatur of the Fifth Circuit’s judgment [5].
What did the Supreme Court decide?
The Court affirmed the Fifth Circuit’s judgment, 6-3 [1]. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett; Justice Elena Kagan dissented, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson [1].
The majority held that HB 1181’s age-verification requirement is subject to intermediate scrutiny and survives it [1]. Its reasoning ran in three steps. States have long been allowed to keep minors from material that is obscene from a minor’s point of view, and requiring proof of age is an ordinary way to enforce that limit, as with alcohol, firearms or buying sexual material in a shop [1]. Adults have a right to view the material but no First Amendment right to avoid showing proof of age, so any burden on them is incidental [1]. And Texas’s interest in shielding children is important, while ID and transactional-data checks are established methods already used by other age-restricted industries, so the law is adequately tailored [1].
Why did the standard of review matter?
Speech cases turn on which test applies. Strict scrutiny, used for content-based limits on protected speech, requires the least restrictive means of serving a compelling interest. Rational-basis review asks only whether a law is rationally related to a legitimate goal. Intermediate scrutiny sits between them [1].
The district court used strict scrutiny and concluded that alternatives such as content-filtering software would burden adults less [1]. The Fifth Circuit used rational basis [4]. The Supreme Court rejected both, describing intermediate scrutiny as “deferential but not toothless” [1].
That choice decided the case. Under intermediate scrutiny, Texas did not have to show that filters or other options would work less well, and it did not have to regulate every place children find sexual content, such as search engines and social media [1]. Under strict scrutiny, the Court had ruled against earlier federal laws aimed at online sexual content in Reno v. ACLU (1997) and Ashcroft v. ACLU (2004) [1]. The majority distinguished those cases because the laws there restricted adults’ access as well as minors’ [1].
What did the dissent argue?
Justice Kagan agreed that states have a compelling interest in protecting children from this material and that minors have no constitutional right to it [1]. Her disagreement was about adults. Because HB 1181 burdens adults’ access to speech that is protected for them, and does so based on its content, she argued that the Court’s earlier cases required strict scrutiny [1].
She described the burden concretely: to enter a covered site, an adult must hand over information about themselves and their viewing habits to an operator who might sell it, be hacked or be subpoenaed [1]. She also noted the cost of verification systems for site operators [1].
Her dissent did not say the Texas law had to fall. She argued that a carefully drawn age-verification law could survive strict scrutiny, and that Texas should have had to show that no less burdensome, equally effective method was available [1].
What did the ruling not decide?
Several questions were left open. The health warnings: the Fifth Circuit held that the state-written warnings unconstitutionally compelled speech, and that part of the injunction stands; the Supreme Court reviewed only the age-verification requirement [4][1]. The Fifth Circuit also rejected the argument that federal Section 230 preempts the law, a point the Supreme Court did not take up [4].
The ruling addressed a facial challenge only. In footnotes, the majority declined to decide whether covered sites must check ages for all their content or only the harmful-to-minors portion, whether the harmful-to-minors standard is judged from the view of young children or of 17-year-olds, and whether the law allows face-scan age estimation, which the challengers said raises fewer privacy concerns [1]. On data privacy, the majority noted that users give their information only to the site or its verifier, and did not rule on how that data must be protected [1].
Back in the district court, the challengers are pursuing claims the Court did not resolve, including excessive fines and lack of fair notice, and a state judge let the Attorney General’s penalty suit against Pornhub’s owner, Aylo, resume [6].
What has the ruling meant for other states’ laws?
For laws modelled on Texas’s, the ruling largely ended broad First Amendment challenges. Within weeks, plaintiffs dropped their challenge to Florida’s law [9], and the Seventh Circuit vacated an injunction against Indiana’s law and directed judgment for the Attorney General on the First Amendment claim [8]. In November 2025 the Sixth Circuit vacated the injunction against Tennessee’s law and sent the case back for proceedings consistent with Paxton [11]. In Louisiana, the plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their long-stalled case in September 2025 [10].
More state laws have taken effect since the decision. As of this update, 27 states have age-verification laws for adult sites in effect, and the US map shows each one. In Congress, the House passed the KIDS Act on June 29, 2026; its first title, the SCREEN Act, would require age verification on sites where more than a third of the material is sexual material harmful to minors, and the bill is now before the Senate Commerce Committee [14].
What challenges are still possible after Paxton?
Challenges now target features that Paxton did not address. In September 2026 a federal judge in Tennessee let the Free Speech Coalition’s claims of overbreadth, vagueness and Section 230 preemption proceed against that state’s amended law, which makes users re-verify after each 60-minute session [7]. The court noted that Paxton did not consider those issues [7].
Aylo’s 2026 lawsuit against Utah expressly did not challenge age verification itself. It targeted a provision tied to users’ actual location, and a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction against that provision on dormant Commerce Clause grounds in September 2026 [12].
The ruling is also reaching beyond porn sites. In October 2026 the Eleventh Circuit cited Paxton when it lifted an injunction against Georgia’s social-media age-verification law, reasoning that the law’s application to platforms that host some pornography would draw intermediate rather than strict scrutiny [13].
Places in this guide
Texas · United States · Tennessee · Indiana