Today, our firm filed an amicus brief in the Fifth Circuit to help defend a Texas law enacted to require age verification for pornographic websites. An adult entertainment association and others challenged the law, and a federal district judge issued an injunction against the law, preventing it from taking effect.
Our amicus brief argued that the district court employed an interest balancing test which empowers judges to circumvent the proper application of constitutional rights. We also explained how the Supreme Court improperly federalized obscenity law using the First Amendment, thus usurping the States’ police power over obscenity and defamation. Finally, we argued that the Supreme Court’s precedents on pornography have been based on the so-called “freedom of expression” — which is not in the First Amendment — thus unmooring it from the text and history of the freedoms of speech and press actually protected by the First Amendment.