Historic Ruling for America’s Children and Families

Today, history has been made. In Free Speech Coalition v Paxton, the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that it is constitutional to require pornography sites to age-verify their users. This is a landmark win for America’s children and families, who have been suffering from a Big Porn industry that has been shielded from liability for systemically failing to keep underage users off of its platforms. 

Free Speech Coalition v Paxton changes all of that, but there is still work to be done. Obscene content is not just a problem for children in red states—it is a national problem that requires a federal solution. Fortunately, Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) has sponsored such a bill in the SCREEN Act, which would require age-verification to access porn sites nationwide, and would provide lawmakers with more powerful mechanisms to penalize bad actors and ensure compliance. IFS fully supports the SCREEN Act and hopes that Democrats and Republicans come together to pass this critical legislation. With this ruling, there remain no substantive objections to a federal solution, so we encourage Congress to do what’s right for America’s kids. 

This is a landmark win for America’s children, who have been suffering from a Big Porn industry that has been shielded from liability for failing to keep underage users off of their platforms.

The Institute for Family Studies is proud to have been a leader in a wider coalition to study the baleful effects of porn on America’s children, formulate the policy to address the problem, help educate lawmakers about effective legislation, argue for the need to remedy this crisis in the public square, and submit amici in support of the Texas law that the Supreme Court has upheld. There are too many allies to name, but here we want to specially acknowledge our nearest partners at the Center for Renewing America, the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), the Family Policy Alliance, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, the American Principles Project, and Representative Laurie Schlegel (R-Louisiana), not to mention the many parents, state legislators, and child safety advocates who believed in this cause and did the hard work of getting similar legislation passed in states across the country.

We are honored to have been part of this coalition, but we are particularly pleased by our major contribution to it. The New York Times recognized our pivotal role in this effort, as did Bloomberg, which described our work as having “turbocharged the national debate over protecting youth online.” In 2024, the Heritage Foundation awarded IFS and EPPC a joint Heritage Innovation Prize for our work on this issue. 

This praise for IFS’s role in this effort is the sweet fruit of years of hard labor. Below is a brief list of the foundational work we produced to inspire and advance the policy vision that underpins these state laws:

• “Protecting Teens from Big Tech: Five Policy Ideas for States” by Clare Morell, Adam Candeub, Jean Twenge, and Brad Wilcox (August 2022);
• “Age Verification: Policy Ideas for States” by John Ehrett and Clare Morell (June 2023)
• “Brief of Social Science Scholars” to the Supreme Court, co-authored by Jason S. Carroll, Jonathan Haidt, Jean M. Twenge, Brad Wilcox, and Brian J. Willoughby (November 2024)
• “Unprotected From Porn: The Rise of Underage Pornography Use and the Ways it is Harming Our Children,” by Jason S. Carroll, Brian J. Willoughby, Brad Wilcox, and Michael Toscano (January 2025)
• And published many articles and editorials in support of this law, particularly here, here, here, and here.

We are thrilled by the Supreme Court’s decision today, and we look forward to continuing this work with our many friends and partners in the quest to seek a federal solution for protecting children and families online. 

But today, we celebrate. Congratulations to all who fought and prayed for this outcome. America’s children desperately needed it. 

Michael Toscano is director of the Family First Technology Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies.