Americans look to the Supreme Court as an umpire in legal and constitutional disputes. There, controversies meet their resolutions, and circuit splits are closed. In some cases, though, the justice’s rulings yield more uncertainty than clarity.
Such a case was Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, in which the Court’s majority upheld the constitutionality of a Texas law requiring online platforms hosting pornography to verify the ages of their users. Before Paxton’s resolution, enforced online age verification had been deemed an unconstitutional burden on Americans’ right to speak freely in the digital world. Online age verification — which usually involves the user uploading a scan of government documentation, such as a driver’s license, or submitting to a facial scan — imposes tremendous burdens on users. Databases of verification information, whether maintained by online platforms or third-party age verification services, are liable to be hacked or leaked. Users fear that, even absent data breaches, verification could compromise their online anonymity, to which, insofar as speech is concerned, they have a First Amendment right.
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