Amicus Brief: Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton
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Children today are deluged by harmful sexual material delivered through their smartphones, tablets, computers, and even smartwatches, negatively affecting their social and psychological development. In 2023, Texas enacted a law, H.B. 1181, to restrict minors’ access to such harmful content by requiring that online adult-content producers and distributors verify users’ age before allowing access to their sites. After a coalition of adult-website operators sued the state to prevent the law from taking effect, the district court found a violation of adults’ First Amendment rights and granted a preliminary injunction. The Fifth Circuit reversed, and the Supreme Court took up the case on the question of which standard of judicial review should apply, which sounds like a hyper-technical question but is important because regulations of speech almost never survive “strict scrutiny.”
Regardless of how the Court decides that question, however, today’s age-verification techniques should survive any level of scrutiny in light of recent developments in age-verification (AV) technology. The Manhattan Institute has filed an amicus brief alongside five distinguished scholars of technology, physics, law, and political science to explain how cutting-edge AV methods use zero-knowledge proofs, biometric age verification and estimation, and trusted third-party providers to protect privacy at minimal cost. Unlike older forms of AV that required uploading government-issued IDs or credit cards, today’s methods need not reveal any other information to age-restricted websites. Only the fact that the user is over a certain age is shared, protecting users’ sensitive information. By offering low-cost, privacy-preserving, user-friendly, and commercially reasonable solutions, these AV methods uphold adults’ free speech rights while protecting minors from accessing materials harmful to them.
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
John Ketcham is a fellow and director of state and local policy at the Manhattan Institute.
Tim Rosenberger is a legal fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
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