Texas and the porn industry are fighting. It all started in 2023 when the Legislature passed House Bill 1181, requiring porn sites to verify the ages of users. The move effectively banned anonymous porn perusal, a low blow to Pornhub frequenters. The big names in the porn industry filed a lawsuit attempting to block the law from going into effect, which failed. Paxton has since gone on to successfully sue smaller noncompliant porn distributors.
“Texas has a right to protect its children from the detrimental effects of pornographic content,” Paxton said in a press release. “As new technology makes harmful content more accessible than ever, we must make every effort to defend those who are most vulnerable.”
Paxton claims the bill aims to limit the easy accessibility to porn, thereby protecting minors from sexually explicit material. Following passage of the bill, individuals had to submit their date of birth (an easily out-witted system) to access an endless stream of salacious videos.
That wasn’t good enough for Paxton, who filed another suit. Now perusers have to upload a picture of their government-issued identification. Instead of violating the privacy of its users, Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub, pulled all operations from Texas. Rumor has it, if you’re quiet you can still hear the hushed sobs of teenage boys across the Lone Star state.
The Free Speech Coalition, a pornography trade group, filed a suit against the age verification law. After working its way up the legal system, the issue reached the U.S. Supreme Court at a Jan. 15 hearing. An official ruling is expected in the summer of 2025.
“As you may know, your elected officials in Texas are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website,” reads Pornhub’s site. “Not only does this impinge on the rights of adults to access protected speech, it fails strict scrutiny by employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas’s stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors.”
A workaround of the verification rules is using a VPN, which masks your IP address, making a user relatively untraceable and protecting your location. We checked to see if it works. It does.
“VPNs are the answer, and they’re easy to get,” the Observer reported last year. “It took us only about two minutes to get set up on one and start scrolling Pornhub again ... for research purposes, naturally.”
One can only assume litigation surrounding the porn industry would produce laughable moments. It has. Here are the best moments from the hearing:
“Girly Magazines” and Legal Precedent
Throughout the hearing, parallels were drawn between printed porn and the digitized versions. There’s actually a legal precedent for age verification and the distribution of pornographic materials. A 1968 decision, Ginsberg v. New York, restricted the sale of printed pornographic materials to minors. Justice Samuel Alito referenced the prior case and theorized about the purchase of a pornographic print publication, uttering the words “girly magazine.”
Alito Cracks Jokes
Like him or not, Hugh Hefner was good at recruiting some of the sharpest journalists of the ‘90s. Among pictures of naked women, one could read an exclusive short story from John Steinbeck, Kurt Vonnegut and Margaret Atwood. President Jimmy Carter even once sat for an interview with Playboy. Honestly, most subscribers probably weren’t receiving their monthly issue “for the articles,” but they had every reason to. So it’s not surprising that wisecracking Justice Samuel Alito asked the Free Speech Coalition’s representative if Pornhub had essays similar to those of award-winning writer Gore Vidal. Anyone who has been on the site knows there are very few written words involved.
Pornhub Wellness?
In rebuttal to Alito’s inquiry, Derek Shaffer, representing the Free Speech Coalition, suggested Pornhub has educational materials.
“Not in that sense,” said Shaffer, regarding literary essays. “But, in the sense you have sexual wellness posts about women recovering from hysterectomies and how they can enjoy sex, that's on — on there.”
