The Moral Panic Over Internet Porn Can’t Overrule the First Amendment
A few weeks ago, I went on the Advisory Opinions podcast to convince New York Times columnist (and constitutional lawyer) David French that his ideas about protecting kids from online porn by mandating age verification couldn’t survive constitutional scrutiny. In the interim, a federal district court in Texas enjoined just such a law in Free Speech Coalition v. Colmenero, finding it likely unconstitutional.
Nevertheless, French has persisted. He renewed his call for age verification on the internet (for porn, at least) in a new Times column this past weekend.
French’s thesis can be distilled to two basic arguments: first, there is no constitutional right to “convenient pornography, and second, that established precedent declaring government-mandated age verification unconstitutional is “outdated.” And so, he concludes, the problem is “more technical than constitutional.” But those arguments, and his conclusion, couldn’t be farther from the truth.