Appeals court upholds Texas’ pornography proof of age law

Texas can again enforce its new law requiring people to prove they are 18 or older to access online porn.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted the state’s request last week to lift a temporary injunction that had blocked implementation of House Bill 1181. Signed into law in June, it requires any commercial entity that publishes or distributes pornographic content online to use age-verification methods to bar users under 18.

In August, a coalition of pornography websites and advocates, including the popular streaming platform Pornhub, sued Texas to prohibit the law from taking effect. A federal judge ruled in their favor, agreeing that the measure likely violated the First Amendment.

But on Nov. 14, a three-judge federal appeals panel on the 5th Circuit vacated the injunction pending appeal. The panel heard oral arguments last month and said it would “issue an expedited opinion as soon as reasonably possible.”

In the meantime, the state is free to enforce HB 1181, which requires individuals attempting to access sexual material to provide digital identification, government-issued identification or transactional data (like mortgage or employment records) to prove they are not minors. The law prohibits companies from retaining any of the identifying information.

Attorney General Ken Paxton called the ruling a “major victory” in protecting children from harmful and obscene materials.

“Texas has a right to protect its children from the detrimental effects of pornographic content,” he said in a statement. “As new technology makes harmful content more accessible than ever, we must make every effort to defend those who are most vulnerable.”

Companies will be fined up to $10,000 per day they are in violation of the age verification requirement, $10,000 per day if the company illegally retains identifying information and $250,000 if at least one child is exposed to pornography due lack of compliance with the law.

In the lawsuit filed Aug. 4, plaintiffs describe the age verification system as the “least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas’s stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors.” It said individuals could easily bypass the system by using a VPN or “tor browser” and pointed to content filtering at the browser or device level as a less invasive alternative.

“But such far more effective and far less restrictive means don’t really matter to Texas, whose true aim is not to protect minors but to squelch constitutionally protected free speech that the state disfavors,” the lawsuit says.