One judge dissents, saying Texas law "limits adults' access to protected speech."

One judge dissents, saying Texas law “limits adults’ access to protected speech.”

Texas can enforce a law requiring age-verification systems on porn websites, the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled Thursday. The appeals court vacated an injunction against the law’s age-verification requirement but said that Texas cannot enforce a provision requiring porn websites to “display health warnings about the effects of the consumption of pornography.”

In a 2-1 decision, judges ruled that “the age-verification requirement is rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in preventing minors’ access to pornography. Therefore, the age-verification requirement does not violate the First Amendment.”

The Texas law was challenged by the owners of Pornhub and other adult websites and an adult-industry lobby group called the Free Speech Coalition. “We disagree strenuously with the analysis of the Court majority,” the Free Speech Coalition said. “As the dissenting opinion by Judge [Patrick] Higginbotham makes clear, this ruling violates decades of precedent from the Supreme Court.”

  • orclev@lemmy.world
    271·
    9 months ago

    It’s because you’re thinking rationally and they not only aren’t, but can’t. Their position is inherently irrational but they want to justify it so they pick and choose and decide to just ignore anything that doesn’t support their desires. Saying states rights and small government has always just been an excuse, it’s just what they actually want isn’t something they can say out loud.

    States rights has always been about racism. None of them cared about states rights until it looked like the federal government was going to outlaw slavery. The next time they started screaming about states rights was when desegregation went into effect and they were forced to treat minorities like actual people. Literally every time they start talking about states rights is when they’re being dragged kicking and screaming away from racism.

    As for “small government” that’s just an excuse to cut social programs they don’t like. You know, the ones that most benefit the poor and minorities (although with the erosion of the middle class at the hands of the ultra wealthy increasingly it also greatly benefits everyone but the ultra wealthy), groups that conservatives have historically discriminated against (and once again it primarily comes back to racism). They’ll never propose cutting spending to groups they like, namely police (because they primarily target the poor and minorities), and the military (I think you can see a pattern here). They’re more than happy to support government spending when those dollars go to something that benefits the wealthy or hurts some kind of minority group.