Fifth Court Circuit of Appeals Landmark Ruling

(Charlottesville, VA.)—For Immediate Release

Contact: Chris Bullivant 

The IFS Wins David-and-Goliath Battle Against Big Tech. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Rules in Favor of Age-Verification.

• Protecting kids from porn doesn’t violate First Amendment
• 11 states have implemented age verification, 12 more may follow

On March 8, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld a Texas law requiring age verification measures to guard the state’s kids from pornography sites.

The decision is a major win for the children of the Lone Star State aided by the policy work of scholars from the Center for Renewing America, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the Institute for Family Studies, who have fought a David-and-Goliath battle against powerful interests to see such laws passed.
 
“Protecting Teens from Big Tech: Five Policy Ideas for States” (August 2022) was a joint policy brief from IFS et al., outlining legislative strategies for states who wanted to protect children online—and empower parents facing the might of huge multinational companies.

To date, Congressional inaction—and Supreme Court rulings that predate social media and smartphones—have permitted social media platforms and pornography sites to addict America’s children, exposing them to obscene content with impunity.
 
The brief encouraged states to stop waiting for Congress and instead act immediately to protect our children. The most urgent of our recommendations to be enacted included:

• age-verification for pornography sites
• age-verification with parental consent for social media platforms.

In 2023, nearly a dozen states implemented one or both of these measures. In 2024, by some counts, more than a dozen additional states are considering following suit.

Lobbyists representing Big Tech and Big Porn, aided by the American commentariat, have contested these laws with an undue confidence that courts would find them unconstitutional.

These gargantuan companies took a shock and awe approach—suing every such law passed.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the following:

Applying rational-basis review, 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.

“This is a landmark ruling,” says Michael Toscano, Executive Director of the Institute for Family Studies, “it is the first federal court decision in American history that is in favor of age verification.”

Toscano continues, “We believe that the logic of this ruling can also be applied to age-verification for social media platforms.

“With this decision, we strongly encourage lawmakers in more states to adopt these types of laws and prepare to fight for them all the way up to the Supreme Court. Because America’s children deserve better.”

IFS research shows that:

• 86% of parents agree it is too easy for kids to find explicit content online
• 80% of parents support requiring parental permission before a minor opens a social media account
• 77% support giving parents administrator-level access to what kids are seeing and doing online

  Further research shows:

• The average age of first exposure to pornography is between 7 and 13 years old.
• 58% of individuals exposed to pornography for the first time accessed the material unintentionally 
• 88.2% of pornographic videos depict sexual violence
• Porn is as dangerous as hard drugs or opioids 

A Pew Research survey April 14-May 4, 2022 on teenager's (ages 13-17) use of 10 online social media platforms found that:

• Nearly half of parents with teens (46%) are highly worried that their child could be exposed to explicit content on social media
• 95% have ever used YouTube, 66% TikTok, 62% Instagram, 59% Snapchat
• 19% of teens say they use YouTube almost constantly, 16% TikTok, and 15% Snapchat
• 54% of teens say it would be very or somewhat hard to give up social media use
• 42% of teens think social media companies should do more to stop abuse and bullying on social media

ENDS.

Notes.

1. The Institute for Family Studies is a think tank researching marriage, family life, and the well-being of children, based in Charlottesville, VA: https://ifstudies.org/ 
2. The Center for Renewing America is a think tank based in Washington, D.C.: https://americarenewing.com/
3. The Ethics and Public Policy Center is a think tank working to apply the riches of the Jewish and Christian traditions to contemporary questions of law, culture, and politics, in pursuit of America’s continued civic and cultural renewal, based in Washington, D.C.: https://eppc.org/
4. Michael Toscano, Executive Director, The Institute for Family Studies, is available to interview.