Will the Supreme Court Change Its Mind About Age Verification?
With Wednesday’s oral argument in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, the U.S. Supreme Court is now set to possibly reconsider its jurisprudence on online age verification. Reading the tea leaves is hard, but the oral arguments do seem to suggest that there is broad agreement that the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals got the standard of review wrong.
Below I will consider some of the big issues that came up in the oral arguments: the distinction between online age verification and checking IDs in the offline world; whether the Court will limit online age verification to pornography; and the impact of technology on the First Amendment assessment.
My prediction: the Court will likely find age-verification laws aimed at preventing minors from accessing online pornography are subject to strict scrutiny, and remand for the lower courts to determine whether the record shows the law is narrowly tailored in light of modern age-verification technology. This would be consistent with the primary precedent on the issue, Ashcroft v. ACLU.