WASHINGTON, DC (July 2, 2024) – The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) recognizes that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to consider a challenge to Texas’ age verification law designed to protect minors from accessing online pornography is an opportunity to significantly advance the protection of children online.
The Texas law requires pornography websites to verify their users are adults.
NCOSE Senior Legal Counsel Peter Gentala said, “This case is an opportunity for the Supreme Court to restore the ability of parents and state and federal governments to protect children from harmful sexual material that is distributed through technology.”
In the early days of the Internet, Congress sought to prevent sexually graphic material from being distributed to children online. Those efforts were blocked by two Supreme Court decisions. As a result, hundreds of millions of children have been harmed by early exposure to dangerous sexual abuse material online.
“It is common sense that parents and communities should have the ability to draw boundaries to protect children from pornography delivered through technology,” Gentala said. “We hope the Supreme Court makes it clear that communities have the broad ability to protect children in online spaces, just as they do in the physical world.”
Online pornography is rampant with content that includes sexual assault, rape, child sexual abuse, image-based sexual abuse, along with other abusive, violent, and racist themes. Learn more about the pornography’s harm to children here: https://endsexualexploitation.org/wp-content/uploads/Most-Dangerous-Playground_NCOSE_2023.pdf
About National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE)
Founded in 1962, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) is the leading national non-partisan organization exposing the links between all forms of sexual exploitation such as child sexual abuse, prostitution, sex trafficking and the public health harms of pornography. https://endsexualexploitation.org/
