Today, June 27, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Texas’s age verification law in a 6-3 decision that marks a troubling lurch towards digital authoritarianism. The ruling in Free Speech Coalition v Paxton greenlights a measure requiring websites with adult content to verify users’ ages, ostensibly to protect minors. But this isn’t progress—it’s a dangerous departure from precedent that undermines both safety and liberty, leaving children and adults more vulnerable while stripping power from those best equipped to safeguard their families.
Breaking from First Amendment Protections
This decision breaks from long-standing First Amendment protections, notably the 2004 ruling in Ashcroft v. ACLU, which struck down a federal law for overly burdening adult speech. The Court’s earlier stance recognized that blanket restrictions on online content risked chilling free expression. Today’s ruling sidesteps that caution, applying a lower scrutiny standard that hands states broad leeway to regulate speech. This isn’t just a legal pivot—it’s an invitation for government overreach into our private digital lives.
The risks are immediate and severe. Forcing users to submit IDs or biometric data creates a treasure trove of sensitive information ripe for breaches. We’ve seen this before—leaks like the 2015 Ashley Madison data breach exposed millions of users. Now, with mandated data collection, children and adults alike face heightened exposure to identity theft and extortion, with marginalized groups already targeted by surveillance bearing the greatest risk. The law’s promise of safety crumbles when the very tools meant to protect become dangerous liabilities.
Driving Children into Dark Corners
Even worse, this ruling disempowers parents by sidelining effective solutions already at their fingertips. Family-friendly device-level filtering tools—widely available and customizable—are pushed aside in favor of a one-size-fits-all mandate. Parents can already lock down smartphones or routers to block adult content, tailoring solutions to their children’s specific needs. Instead, the state now dictates access, overriding parental control with a blunt instrument that ignores individual family circumstances.
The fallout won’t stop with compliant sites. As legal platforms comply or shut down (Pornhub’s Texas exit offers a preview), demand will shift to unregulated corners of the internet. Users will increasingly flood platforms like X or Reddit with adult content—spaces that already host large volumes of such material but haven’t yet been targeted by these laws. Others will turn to offshore sites that can simply ignore U.S. age verification requirements, potentially opening a new battleground over centralized website blocking.
As more countries announce or adopt similar age-blocking mandates—including a United Kingdom mandate that begins next month—the writing may be on the wall for online privacy worldwide. We are well on our way toward transforming the entire internet into a panopticon where every click can be tracked. Ultimately, the Tor network could see a surge in users, creating a realm where anonymity shields not just consenting adults but also predators evading regulation.
A Slippery Slope to Broader Censorship
This ruling opens a Pandora’s box that extends far beyond adult content. If the government can demand IDs for such material, what’s next? Reproductive health information? LGBTQ+ resources? Political content deemed “harmful” by state authorities? The precedent now exists for states to tag virtually any content as requiring age verification, systematically stripping away digital anonymity. History shows us that censorship never ends with just one category—once the door is ajar, it swings wide open.
We don’t have to speculate about what comes next—it’s already happening. With the governor of South Carolina’s signature Tuesday, there are now 25 states with laws on the books banning trans health care for minors. Within the last several years, at least two states, Florida and Iowa, removed online content geared towards the safety of LGBTQ+ youth. Meanwhile, states are aggressively targeting reproductive health access, with three other states introduced similar bills—Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma to ban abortion support information. The infrastructure for digital censorship is being built piece by piece, and today’s ruling just handed authorities the master key.
A Better Path Forward
There is a better way. Platform-level trust and safety tools—such as content tagging and filtering that clearly marks adult material—offer one component of a comprehensive solution. That’s exactly what COSL is pursuing with our new Fan Refuge project, which we’re currently crowdfunding. As part of this initiative, we’re developing open-source tools that warn users about potentially offensive content, allowing them to give informed consent about what they view while fine-tuning these warnings to their personal preferences.
These platform-level safeguards should be paired with robust device-level filters that empower users without requiring mass data collection. This approach offers flexibility that one-size-fits-all laws cannot match, evolving to balance access and protection while letting adults enjoy legal speech and giving parents precise tools to protect their children. Today’s ruling rejects that nuanced path, trading genuine liberty for a false sense of security that endangers us all.
Join the Fight
At the Center for Online Safety and Liberty, we believe that safety and freedom aren’t trade-offs; they’re ours to defend together. And you can help. Donate to our legal advocacy fundraiser below to help us fight privacy-infringing laws, while promoting positive alternatives. If you don’t have the money to donate but do have the time, we’re currently looking for an activist to join the fight. Or simply help spread the word by sharing our social media posts, forwarding our newsletter, or linking to our podcast.
Today’s ruling isn’t just about porn—it’s about whether we’ll sleepwalk into a surveillance state while telling ourselves it’s for the children. The road to digital authoritarianism is paved with good intentions and bad precedents.