Published November 25, 2024
On November 22, 2024, EPPC fellows Eric Kniffin and Rachel N. Morrison filed a Supreme Court amicus brief on behalf of EPPC fellows Clare Morell and Brad Littlejohn in support of a Texas law that requires commercial porn sites to verify that potential users are over 18.
The case, Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, alleges that Texas’ law violates the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause. Challengers rely on a 2004 Supreme Court case that held that the law’s age-verification requirements unconstitutionally restricts too much speech because internet content filters, installed and maintained by parents, adequately protect minors from porn.
The brief draws on Clare Morell’s advocacy for age-verification laws as part of EPPC’s Technology and Human Flourishing Project, as well as Brad Littlejohn’s scholarship on the proper roles of parents and government in protecting children from internet pornography.
The brief summarizes the current landscape of online pornography and content filtering and shows why content filters alone are not enough to protect children from internet pornography and its harms. The brief argues:
Over the past quarter century, the technological landscape has changed profoundly. . . . Pornography has become far more pervasive, invasive, violent, and harmful to minors. Moreover, smartphones and social media platforms and apps—none of which existed [in 2004]—have made it much harder for parents to protect their children through content filters. . . .
For too long, parents have been left to fight a one-sided war against Big Tech and Big Porn on their own. Parents need all the help they can get, including from legislators willing to pursue a multi-layered approach, including parental education, device filter mandates, site-based age verification, and device-based age verification. Texas has done just that while respecting First Amendment protections for speech.
Eric Kniffin is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he works on a range of initiatives to protect and strengthen religious liberty as part of EPPC’s HHS Accountability Project.
