Porn, Guns, Marriage, and Voting
From today’s majority opinion by Justice Thomas in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton:
Age-verification laws like H. B. 1181 fall within States’ authority to shield children from sexually explicit content. The First Amendment leaves undisturbed States’ traditional power to prevent minors from accessing speech that is obscene from their perspective. Ginsberg v. New York (1968). That power necessarily includes the power to require proof of age before an individual can access such speech. It follows that no person—adult or child—has a First Amendment right to access speech that is obscene to minors without first submitting proof of age.
The power to verify age is a necessary component of the power to prevent children’s access to content that is obscene from their perspective. “No axiom is more clearly established in law, or in reason, than that … wherever a general power to do a thing is give
Article from Reason.com
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