SCOTUS’ Decision to Uphold the Texas Age Verification Law Jeopardizes Everyone’s Online Privacy and Security, Says OTI

WASHINGTON—In response to the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a Texas law that requires certain websites to verify age, the Open Technology Institute (OTI), a New America program fostering equitable access to digital technology and its benefits, issued the following statement from Prem Trivedi.

The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Texas H.B. 1181 is disappointing. By lowering the bar for assessing the constitutionality of online age verification mandates, the court puts Americans’ privacy and security at risk.

OTI has long argued that the Texas law fails to meet strict scrutiny because the burden on internet users to verify their age with currently available methods is too high, and the law insufficiently protects people’s privacy and security. In practice, most forms of online age verification rely on identifying people using driver’s licenses or other IDs, which risks that information being stored in perpetuity, stolen by hackers, or unscrupulously sold. But the court ignores these risks and has concluded instead that the law merits intermediate scrutiny because it only “incidentally” burdens adults. This decision allows states to discount significant potential harms to privacy and security.

We hope the sites and services that now must comply with H.B. 1181 will check ages and handle the data they must collect in a responsible, privacy-protective way. For their part, states should not interpret this decision as a blank check to implement online age verification laws that apply to broad swaths of online activity. They should, instead, recognize the decision for what it is: a narrow ruling that states can require online age verification to prevent minors from accessing sexually explicit content.