In 2023, the Texas Legislature enacted House Bill 1181,[1] a law requiring age-verification on websites with more than a third of its content "harmful to minors",[2] by a broad bipartisan vote.

[3] The majority opinion for the Fifth Circuit panel was by Judge Jerry Smith, who said that the age-verification requirement was within the state's legitimate interest in preventing minors' access to pornography.

[4] In Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union II (2004), the Supreme Court affirmed a preliminary injunction against the Child Online Protection Act, a federal law that required age verification for commercial websites hosting "material harmful to children".

[3] Court observers stated that the six conservative justices along with the more liberal Kagan appeared to be in favor of requiring tighter controls to access pornography; the conditions around Ashcroft, where the Court had ruled that filtering software could be used, were no longer reasonable due to the ubiquitiness of devices like iPhones and youth typically being more tech savvy than their parents and able to bypass these filters.

Only Alito supported the use of the rational basis standard to review Texas law, while the other Justices suggested an intermediate scrutiny that would allow states to require verification for pornography but not for all sexual-related materials, such as information related to LGBTQ culture.