Published January 15, 2026
Today, the state of Texas will argue before the US Supreme Court that the government can restrict children’s access to online pornography without harming the free speech rights of adults. Parents — and all Americans — should hope the justices will see that new technologies can lead them to find Texas’s effort constitutional.
In Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, the court will decide if states can require pornographic websites to verify the age of their users — a potential watershed case for internet regulation. The Texas law, HB 1181, like other recent state laws recently, requires pornography websites to effectively restrict their content to users over 18. (We are both amici curiae in the case.) The Supreme Court last addressed this issue two decades ago, striking down federal age-verification laws in Reno v. ACLU (1997) and Ashcroft v. ACLU (2004). But the court now faces a transformed technological landscape: Protecting kids online has become nearly impossible for parents, while age verification has become simple and anonymous.
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Clare Morell is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, in the Bioethics, Technology and Human Flourishing Program. She is also the author of the award-winning book, The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones, published by Penguin Random House. Prior to joining EPPC, Ms. Morell worked in both the White House Counsel’s Office and the Department of Justice, as well as in the private and non-profit sectors.
