The State of Online Age Verification Post-Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton
The Supreme Court’s opinion in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton gave policymakers a big win in the battle for age verification for access to online pornography. But the broader war over age verification and parental consent online isn’t over. In fact, the majority’s opinion suggests that age verification for protected speech to minors will be subject to “strict scrutiny,” which it is unlikely to survive. Thus, the majority’s holding that unprotected, “obscene” speech to minors receives only “intermediate scrutiny” may be fairly narrow. Ultimately, this suggests that more expansive age-verification and parental consent regimes for social media or for the Internet more broadly through the app store or device filters are likely to fail under First Amendment analysis.