The Supreme Court will hear the arguments from Texas in January to uphold a Texas law that requires pornographic companies to require age verification on websites. In 2023, the State of Texas put a law in place to protect minors from pornographic content online. A day before the law was supposed to go into effect, a U.S. District Judge struck the law down. Over a year later, several lawsuits have been filed and SCOTUS is expected to hear the case. Several other states have passed age verification laws. Utah enacted one in May 2023, and Kansas followed in Texas’ footsteps in 2024. Here’s everything that has led up to the Jan. 15 hearing. What is House Bill 1181 and when did it go into effect On Jan. 4, 2023, House Bill 1181 was filed with the Secretary of State. The bill was signed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and set to take effect on Sept. 1, 2023. The law requires reasonable age verification measures to protect minors from being exposed to obscene materials. Companies violating the age verification requirements will be subject to fines of up to $10,000 per day, an additional $10,000 per day if the corporation illegally retains identifying information, and $250,000 if a child is exposed to pornographic content due to not properly verifying a user’s age. U.S. District Judge strikes the law down A lawsuit challenging HB 1181 was filed on Aug. 4, 2023, by the Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for the adult entertainment industry, and a person identified as Jane Doe and described as an adult entertainer on various adult sites, including Pornhub. One day before the law was set to take effect on Sept. 1, 2023,  U.S. District Judge David Ezra struck down the law’s age verification requirement and health warnings. Ezra agreed with claims that HB 1181 violated free speech rights and is overbroad and vague. “People will be particularly concerned about accessing controversial speech when the state government can log and track that access,” Ezra wrote. “By verifying information through government identification, the law will allow the government to peer into the most intimate and personal aspects of people’s lives.” Ezra said Texas has a legitimate goal of protecting children from online sexual material but noted other measures, including blocking and filtering software, exist. The state attorney general’s office, which is defending the law, immediately filed a notice of appeal to the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans. Texas AG Ken Paxton files lawsuits In November 2023, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the injunction Ezra’s ruling put in place, allowing Texas to enforce the law. This action allowed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to file a lawsuit against Aylo Global Entertainment, a major pornography distribution company that runs several of the largest pornography websites, including Pornhub. “Texas has a right to protect its children from the detrimental effects of pornographic content,” said Paxton. “I look forward to holding any company accountable that violates our age verification laws intended to prevent minors from being exposed to harmful, obscene material on the internet.” Paxton sued two more pornography companies, Multi Media, LLC. and Hammy Media, for violation of the law in March. In March 2024, Pornhub disabled access to their sites in Texas in response to the lawsuit. The company posted a letter on its website deeming the Texas law ineffective and “dangerous,” adding that it will directly impact content creators’ ability to distribute their adult content legally. “While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, providing identification every time you want to visit an adult platform is not an effective solution for protecting users online, and in fact, will put minors and your privacy at risk,” the letter read. PornHub has now disabled its website in Texas. Sites like PornHub are on the run because Texas has a law that aims to prevent them from showing harmful, obscene material to children. We recently secured a major victory against PornHub and other sites that sought to block this law…— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) March 14, 2024 SCOTUS leaves Texas law in place An emergency appeal was filed in April by the Free Speech Coalition. However, the Supreme Court refused to block the Texas law requiring pornographic websites to verify the age of their users. There were no noted dissents from the court’s one-sentence order. The industry was disputing the health warnings portion of the law that states that pornography is addictive, impairs mental development and increases the demand for prostitution, child exploitation and child sexual abuse images SCOTUS agrees to hear arguments On July 2, the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal from the adult entertainment industry seeking to upend the Texas law. The justices will review an appellate ruling that allowed the age verification to go into effect. Arguments are set to be heard on Jan. 15, 2025, from the Free Speech Coalition and Gov. Greg Abbott, who signed Bill 1181 into law. According to a press release from Paxton, several states, lawmakers, and experts filed amicus briefs in support of the Texas law before the hearing. What is an amicus brief? An amicus brief, or amicus curiae, is an unsolicited statement about a case from a party not involved in the case. It is not legally binding but could influence a court’s decision. The court has discretion over whether the brief will be considered.