TFF’s Policy Team Attends SCOTUS Rally in Support of TX’s Commonsense Law
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, the Supreme Court of the United States is hearing arguments in the landmark case Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. Free Speech Coalition concerns a challenge to a Texas law that requires websites that host pornography as more than 33% of their total content to verify the age of their users. The Supreme Court’s decision to accept this case follows a Fifth Circuit decision that upheld Texas’s age verification law. The Supreme Court can now definitively rule that these essential protections for children, rightly passed by state legislators in Kentucky (HB 278) and in at least 19 states, are consistent with the U.S. Constitution.
The Family Foundation’s director of policy, Nick Spencer, and legal and policy advisor, Jesse Green, are at the Supreme Court today in support of Texas’s law. You can read a brief joined by The Family Foundation and over 30 of our allied family policy organizations here.
Statement from David Walls, executive director of The Family Foundation:
“We urge the High Court to uphold this commonsense age verification law protecting children from harmful online pornography. States have a duty to shield children from the massive porn and social media industries that should be protecting kids rather than profiting from them.
“I continue to be thankful for the bipartisan vote in the Kentucky General Assembly to pass HB 278, and The Family Foundation looks forward to continuing to advocate for additional protections for children online, including from the harms of cell phones and social media,” Walls concluded.
HB 278 by Rep. Matt Lockett (R-Nicholasville) included similar age verification protections for children as the Texas law and unanimously passed in the 2024 General Assembly. In response to the hearing today, Rep. Lockett commented:
“The protections enacted by Kentucky, Texas, and many other states across the country are simply common sense and fall well within the jurisdiction and responsibility of state legislatures. Kentucky has helped to lead the way to protect children from harm online, and I am hopeful that the Supreme Court will agree and uphold these immensely important laws.”
The Kentucky Senate passed HB 278 36-0 with an amendment by Sen. Gex Williams containing the online protections for children. The bill was passed with a bipartisan vote of 96-0 in the Kentucky House. Since the passage of HB 278 in Kentucky, the largest provider of online pornography shut down access in the Commonwealth.
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The Family Foundation is the leading Christian public policy organization in Kentucky and stands for Kentucky families and the Biblical values that make them strong. Learn more at kentuckyfamily.org.
