FSC v. Paxton: WoLF Submits Amicus Brief to SCOTUS in Support of Anti-Porn Law
WoLF has helped pass similar age-verification laws around the country, cutting porn purveyors and predators off at the knees
In March of this year, users seeking illicit pornography in Texas discovered that Pornhub had completely disabled their site across the state. The site remains offline to this day, six months later, thanks to a 2023 bill requiring porn sites to use “reasonable age verification methods” to ensure that individuals attempting to access the content are not minors.
Pornhub immediately challenged the law via their proxy, the Free Speech Coalition. FSC helped strike down provisions of the Child Pornography Prevention Act, pushing the line that adult access to online porn trumps the safety and well-being of children. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of upholding Texas’ age-verification law, and the case is now before the Supreme Court as Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton.
Today, WoLF submitted an amicus brief to the court in support of the Texas law.
Our argument to the Supreme Court:
Pornography is harmful to children. Online porn features human trafficking, rape, and child assault videos. Violent porn has been proven to be extremely detrimental to children’s mental health and social development.
State action is necessary to safeguard children from internet pornography.
Internet pornography is a violent criminal enterprise.
There is no free speech protection for recording and profiting from acts of sexual violence.
There is no protected interest in viewing internet pornography anonymously. Porn sites freely sell user data as part of their business model.
Background: Porn Age-Verification Laws
In an ideal world, porn would be treated in the law for what it is: filmed evidence of a crime. Whether that crime is sexual assault, rape, trafficking, or prostitution; it is undeniably a form of commercial sexual exploitation, and women are the targets for exploitation and violence depicted in porn. WoLF’s mission is to abolish violence against women and girls, and abolishing porn is one of our major goals.
Porn is one of the most insidious threats facing women today. The impacts of this 97-billion-dollar industry on the psyches of men and boys, and bodies of women and girls, can not be overstated. It promotes misogyny, sexual violence, and dangerous and escalating sexual behaviors that men inflict on women and girls. The scale of the threat posed by porn is why we support many different kinds of efforts to reduce the spread of porn in society.
It’s already a crime to show porn to minors. However, there is no enforcement of this in most states when it comes to the largest distributors of pornography: websites like Pornhub. Tech companies and porn purveyors have repeatedly refused to strengthen their platforms to protect minors. Age verification laws not only prevent minors from accessing porn, but by requiring specific steps to verify user ages and issuing large fines to sites that fail to comply, “it drags down the earning potential of publishers and adds costs to users who create content,” according to porn advocates. When an age-verification law was implemented in Louisiana, traffic to Pornhub site dropped by 80%, demonstrating how effective these laws are.
WoLF has testified in support of similar age-restriction laws in Alaska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and California.
Read more about HB 1181 and WoLF’s anti-porn strategy in supporting age-verification laws.
WoLF is the Only Feminist Advocacy Organization Standing Up To Pornographers In This Potentially Precedent-Setting Case
Nearly every civil rights organization weighing in on the case has sold out to pornographers. This includes multiple “free speech” organizations such as the ACLU, Free Speech Coalition (a nonprofit front for the porn lobby), Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and American Booksellers for Free Expression. Incredibly, the United States itself even filed an amicus curiae brief on the side of the pornographers.
Even more disturbing, the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children also joined the side of pornographers (despite overwhelming evidence that children are routinely exploited by Pornhub and other pornographers). They claim that it is better if children are allowed to access porn on “regulated” sites like Pornhub, and that ultimately it should be left to parents or operating systems to filter out inappropriate content.
WoLF is the only national organization fighting for women’s rights that was willing to stand up to Pornhub and the powerful porn lobby in this case, demonstrating exactly why women have lost faith in the mainstream organizations that claim to care about us.
Support Our Work this Giving Season!
WoLF has been fighting to protect women and girls for over ten years. We would not have gotten this far without our generous supporters! Will you donate to help fund our critical feminist legal and policy work between now and Tuesday, December 3rd?
