The US Supreme Court on 27 June upheld Texas’s H.B. 1181, ruling 6–3 that the state may require commercial websites hosting sexually explicit content to verify that users are at least 18 years old. Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said the measure advances Texas’s "traditional power" to protect minors and survives intermediate First Amendment scrutiny. The liberal justices—Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor—dissented, warning that the law imposes a content-based burden on lawful adult speech that should trigger strict scrutiny. Under H.B. 1181, sites whose material is more than one-third "sexual content harmful to minors" must use government-issued IDs or approved third-party services to confirm a visitor’s age. The Free Speech Coalition, representing Pornhub and other adult-content providers, argued that the mandate chills adults’ access to legal material and exposes personal data to hacking. Lower courts had split the statute, allowing age checks while blocking a separate requirement to post state-written health warnings. Friday’s ruling affirms a 2024 Fifth Circuit decision and marks the Court’s sharpest turn yet toward upholding digital age-gating laws; a 2004 precedent striking down a similar federal act had leaned the other way. The decision is expected to accelerate adoption of comparable rules in the roughly two dozen states that have already passed or proposed them. Pornhub, which withdrew service in Texas after the statute took effect, and other platforms must now decide whether to comply, geoblock or pursue new litigation over the remaining disclosure provisions.