In an amicus curiae brief submitted yesterday, the Woodhull Freedom Foundation and Electronic Frontier Foundation urged the Supreme Court to hear an appeal and ultimately reverse a lower court’s ruling on Texas’ HB 1181, saying that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, “if left standing, would impermissively burden free speech online.”
“We rely on the Court to ignore misinformation and, instead, rule based only on the law,” said Ricci Levy, President & CEO of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation. “The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized the significant burden and risk created by requiring users to verify their age and identity to access protected content, rendering such requirements unconstitutional where less restrictive alternatives exist. In Ashcroft v. ACLU, the Court reaffirmed that the government cannot impose age verification on adults in the name of protecting children.
Levy added that if the “true goal of these measures is to protect children from material that isn’t age-appropriate, which we fully support, other less intrusive options are already available to accomplish this goal – and must be used in order to protect the rights of adults.
“But if the real goal is to block adult access and shut down the adult content currently available, and if the Justices allow that to happen, then Democracy as we believe it to be is dead,” Levy said. “A big thank you to MojoHost for donating the necessary funds to defray the legal fees and costs of filing a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court.”
“As a parent, business owner and web host for 25 years I can’t remain silent while our constitution is violated in the name of child protection when I know for a fact that this bad legislation puts both our children and rights as Americans in peril,” said Brad Mitchell, President of MojoHost. “I am proud to support Woodhull and the EFF’s efforts in seeking this writ of certiorari. The action of inhibiting free speech does nothing to protect our children, it will only result in elevating worse content such as CSAM, copyright theft, and abusive materials from other jurisdictions outside of the United States where enforcement is impossible and viewing is freely available.”
Mitchell added that it was a “no-brainer to financially support these great organizations in combating outright speech suppression.”
Attorney Lawrence Walters of the Walters Law Group and FirstAmendment.com said the “outcome of this case, if accepted, will have a monumental impact on freedom of speech, data privacy, and First Amendment law.”
“We remain hopeful that the Justices will decide to grant certiorari and invalidate the blatantly unconstitutional Texas age verification law,” Walters added. “I am grateful to be a part of the stellar legal team that drafted the amicus brief for Woodhull and EFF.”
Corey Silverstein, of Silverstein Legal said he’s “very proud of being part of the legal team tasked by Woodhull and the EFF to combat this outright trampling of the First Amendment and existing Supreme Court precedent.”
“Texas’ age verification bill needs to be stopped in its tracks and I am hopeful and confident that the justices of the Supreme Court will utilize their wisdom and grant certiorari and give the petitioner the opportunity to present its case as to why the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has made such a terrible error,” Silverstein said. “Woodhull and the EFF are incredible organizations and their dedication to protecting free speech is unmatched.”
In the amicus brief submitted by Woodhull and EFF, the organizations noted that prior to the Fifth Circuit’s decision in the case, “courts have uniformly subjected online age-verification laws like HB 1181 to strict scrutiny, in part because online identification and data collection mandates more significantly burden First Amendment rights than do restrictions on in-person access to adult materials.”
“The court below did not appreciate the immense differences in the burdens placed on adults’ constitutional rights to access lawful expression and wrongly applied rational basis review under Ginsberg v. New York,” the amici added. “This Court should grant review of the Fifth Circuit’s decision to uphold the age-verification provisions of Texas HB 1181.”
You can read the amicus brief in full here.
