Today’s decision in Free speech coalition c. Paxton is a direct blow for the rights to the freedom of expression of adults. The court ruled that “no person – adult or child – has a right of the first amendment to access an obscene speech for minors without first subjecting proof of age.” This decision allows States to promulgate age verification rules that will prevent adults from accessing lawful speech, reducing their ability to be anonymous and compromising their security and confidentiality of data. These are real and immense burdens for adults, and the court was wrong to ignore them in the maintenance of the law of Texas.
It is important to note that the reasoning of the court only applies to the rules for verifying age for some sexual material, and not to age limits in general. We will continue to combat age restrictions on online access more widely, such as social networks and specific online features.
However, the decision has immense consequences for Internet users in Texas and other states that have promulgated similar laws. Texas law obliges adults to submit personal information on the Internet to access whole websites that have a certain amount of sexual equipment, not only pages or parts of sites containing specific sexual equipment. Many sites that cannot reasonably implement age verification measures for reasons such as costs or technical requirements will likely block users living in Texas and other states with large, large laws.
Above all, the reasoning of the court only applies to the rules for verifying age for certain sexual materials and not to age limits in general.
Many users will not be comfortable sharing private information to access sites that implement age verification, for reasons of confidentiality or concern for data violations. Many others do not have a driver’s license or photo identification to complete the age verification process. This decision will ultimately dissuade adult users from speaking and accessing lawful content, and will endanger the intimacy of those who choose to move forward with verification.
What the court said today
In decision 6-3, the court ruled that Texas’ HB 1181 is constitutional. This law obliges the websites that Texas decides is made up of “third party” or more of “harmful sexual material for minors” to confirm the age of users by collecting personal information in matters of all visitors – to access the two other thirds of elements that are not content for adults.
In 1997, the Supreme Court annulled a federal law on online age verification in Reno c. American Civil Liberties Union. In this case, the court judged that many elements of the law on the decency of communications raped the first amendmentIncluding a part of the law, which makes it a crime for anyone who engages in an online discourse which is “indecent” or “manifestly offensive” if the speech could be considered by a minor. Like HB 1181, this law would have resulted Among many users, unable to see the discourse protected by the Constitution, because many websites should have implemented age verification, while others were forced to close.
In Reno and in the following affairs, the Supreme Court judged that the laws which hang adult access to a legal discourse are subject to the highest level of revision under the first amendment, called strict examination. This level of control requires that a law be very closely adapted or the least restrictive means available to the government.
Everything has changed with the decision of the Supreme Court today.
The court now says that the laws on adults‘ Access to obscene sexual materials for minors is subject to a less sought -after first amendment review, known as the intermediate control. And under this lower standard, Texas law does not violate the first amendment. The court did not have to respond to the arguments according to which there are means of restriction of the word to achieve the same objective, for example, encouraging parents to install filter software of content on the devices of their children.
The court made this decision by wrongly assuming that online age verification is functionally equivalent to flashing an ID in a brick and mortar store. As we have explained in our Amicus memory, this ignores the many ways whose online age verification is much heavier and invasive than doing it in person. Like us and many others have previously explainUnlike aging checks, the only viable way for a website to comply with an age verification requirement is to require that all users download and submit – not justly displayed – an identifier issued by the government rich in data or another document with personal identification information.
This leads to a multitude of problems of concern for anonymity, confidentiality and serious security, the majority of which did not respond. A person who subjects the identification of online information can never be sure if the websites will keep this information or how this information can be used or disclosed. This makes users very vulnerable to data violations and other security damage. Age verification also undermines anonymous internet navigation, even if the courts have always judged that anonymity is an aspect of freedom of speech protected by the first amendment.
This Supreme Court has broken a fundamental agreement between Internet users and the state that has existed since its creation
The Court teamadvanced his previous online age verification decisions by claiming tHe changed too much to follow the previous one of Reno This requires that these laws survive a strict examination. Writing for the minority, judge Kagan disagreed with the premise that the Internet has changed: “the complaint of the majority – again – that the Internet has changed too much to follow the example of our previous ones”.
But the majority argues that the previous previous precedent does not take into account the dramatic expansion of the Internet since the 1990s, which has led to easier and more important Internet access and to higher amounts of content available for online adolescents. The opinion of the majority fails to approach the obvious corollary: the expansion of the Internet also benefited adults. Age verification requirements now affect adults exponentially more than they did in the 1990s and the burden much more protected by online discourse protected by the Constitution. The majority argument really demonstrates that the charges on adult discourse have increased spectacularly biggest Due to technological changes, the courtyard strangely interprets this expansion as justification for lower constitutional protection.
What it means to go ahead
This Supreme Court has broken a fundamental agreement between Internet users and the state that has existed since its creation: the government will not preclude people accessing the material protected by the first amendment. There is no doubt that several states will now introduce similar laws to Texas. Two dozen have already done so, although they are not all in force. At least three of these states have no limits on the percentage of required equipment before the law applies – a radical restriction on each site which contains any material that the state believes that the law includes. These laws will oblige adult websites based in the United States to implement age verification or block users in these states, as many have in the past when similar laws were in force.
Rather than submitting to verification, research discovered that people will choose a variety of other paths: Use of VPN To indicate that they are outside the state, access similar sites that do not comply with the law, often because the site operates in another country. While many users will simply not access the content accordingly, others can accept the risk, to Their danger.
We expect certain states to postpone the limits in terms of content they consider “harmful to minors” and to extend the type of websites covered by these laws, either by the updated language, or by dispute threats. Even if these attacks are canceled, site operators that involve sexual content of any type can be threatened, especially if this information is politically divided. We fear that the purpose of some of these laws is to dissuade queer people and others to access a legal discourse and find an online community by forcing them to identify. We will continue to fight to protect ourselves against the disclosure of this critical information and so that people maintain their anonymity.
EFF will continue to fight for the freedom and confidentiality of all users
That said, the decision does not give states or the green light to impose larger internet age verification regulations. The decision of the majority is based on the fact that minors do not have the right to the first amendment to access sexual documents that would be obscene. In short, adults have the right to the first amendment to access these sexual materials, unlike minors. Although it is false, the opinion of the majority has judged that, because Texas blocks the minors of speech, they do not have the constitutional right of access, the requirement of verification of age is only the rights of the first amendment of the adult.
But the same justification does not apply to the sites and services of the general audience, including social media. Minors and adults have coextensive rights to speak and access the discourse of other users on these sites, because the vast majority of discourse is not sexual materials that would be obscene for minors. Legislators should take care not to interpret this decision as indicating that the broader restrictions on the rights of minors of the first amendment, such as those included Online security act for childrenwould be considered constitutional.
Free speech coalition c. Paxton will have an effect on almost all adult internet users in the foreseeable future. He marks a disturbing change in the way governments can restrict access to online speech. But it only means that we have to work harder than ever to protect confidentiality, security and freedom of expression as central principles of the Internet.
