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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."

WHY CAN PARENTS NOT DO THIS ASPECT?!

This is the continual wild part of recent conservative bullshit. Everything the State is taking up is basically something a parent could step in and deal with.

"My kid read a bad book that turned them into a frog! Which is also gay!"

Well watch what your fucking is reading then and have a discussion about why you disapprove of it.

"My kid is watching porn and now they can't function in society and don't want to get a $7.25/hr job of listening to Karens scream at them!"

Then fucking don't leave a computer in the their room perhaps? Maybe take their phone away at the end of the day? I mean or have a rational discussion about their ever changing body as they begin to become an adult? I mean any one of those is better than "OH I KNOW! I'LL LET THE GOVERNMENT PARENT FOR ME!!"

And what's wilder about the Conservative movement, the level of parenting has zero rhyme or reason.

• Watching porn? — That's Government parenting.
• Working in a meat packing facility with blades so sharp they slice through literal bone? — Oh yeah that's totally a regular parent thing.

Fucking wild is what it is!

I'm really struggling to wrap my head around where this line between Government overstepping and justified Government regulation is with them. If you don't want your kid watching porn, then don't let them fucking watch porn. Ideally you should have a talk about their ever evolving sexuality but clearly that's just crazy liberal talk from me.

I had some discussion with someone once about the 10th amendment and it relating to State's banning abortion. And guy was like "Oh yeah this is a clear win for State's rights!" And I'm like, the 10th amendment is setup that we have one of two winners at the end of the day. The State or the People.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

It says OR there. That means every "State win" is a "the people loss". You do understand that right?

Just fucking silence as that thought slow rolled into his brain's processing center, that then subsequently hit the panic button because of overload.

I just fucking can't. DO you want Big Brother in everything or no? Because every inch you give to the Government helps them step-bro your ass.

“As the dissenting opinion by Judge [Patrick] Higginbotham makes clear, this ruling violates decades of precedent from the Supreme Court.”

Dude, the Supreme Court doesn’t care about the precedent of the Supreme Court anymore. Why would Texas care?

Fuckers. Nobody was disputing that Texas could require age verification, the complaint was about requiring their bullshit health warning that has no scientific basis. Corrupt judges just decided to ignore the actual complaint and rule on the part of the law nobody was contesting.

What level of verification is required? Do you have to opt in to watch porn with your ISP? Is a credit card enough? Send them a copy of your birth certificate?

I'm curious if companies will comply or just cut Texas off completely. That may take care of the big paysites and Pornhub, but there hundreds of rehost steam sites and torrent sites that will just ignore it. In which case Texas will have to build their own great firewall.

I hope the internet is prepared for when VPNs will be targeted. A LOT of free access to the internet nowadays hinges on the use of VPNs and I have been dreading the day when corpos and politicians finally catch up to that fact for some years now. Remember when credit card companies removed themselves from Pornhub as a payment method after just one article from about exploiative material on the platform?

Just think about the consequences when you will only be able to subscribe to VPNs through bitcoin. I know, subscribing with your credit card isn't the smartest move in regards to privacy, but it works for a lot of stuff that isn't that dramatic (e. g. circumventing geoblocking).

I don't think we're that far away from the endgame for the free internet. Enshittification is just the first step. When that eventually doesn't work out, they will come for VPNs and stuff like the fediverse.

It's the 5th circuit, what'd you expect?

Secede please

These skin suits are so clueless

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."

Haven't seen the opinion, but I'd think that the bar here is strict scrutiny, and that's probably a higher bar than being "rationally related".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny

In U.S. constitutional law, when a law infringes upon a fundamental constitutional right, the court may apply the strict scrutiny standard. Strict scrutiny holds the challenged law as presumptively invalid unless the government can demonstrate that the law or regulation is necessary to achieve a "compelling state interest". The government must also demonstrate that the law is "narrowly tailored" to achieve that compelling purpose, and that it uses the "least restrictive means" to achieve that purpose. Failure to meet this standard will result in striking the law as unconstitutional.

The standard is the highest and most stringent standard of judicial review and is part of the levels of judicial scrutiny that courts use to determine whether a constitutional right or principle should give way to the government's interest against observance of the principle. The lesser standards are rational basis review and exacting or intermediate scrutiny. These standards are applied to statutes and government action at all levels of government within the United States.

U.S. courts apply the strict scrutiny standard in two contexts:

• when a fundamental constitutional right is infringed, particularly those found in the Bill of Rights and those the court has deemed a fundamental right protected by the Due Process Clause or "liberty clause" of the 14th Amendment, or

reads article

Huh. Well, the majority opinion was apparently specifically that this was not the case:

The 5th Circuit, generally regarded as one of the most conservative appeals courts, found that the Texas porn-site law should be reviewed on the "rational-basis" standard and not under strict scrutiny.

Kind of glad I had access to porn as a kid, although sex would've been way better.