WASHINGTON, DC (June 27, 2025) – The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) celebrates the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in FSC v. Paxton that upheld the Texas age verification law protecting children from easily accessing harmful pornography online. The NCOSE Law Center filed an Amicus Brief representing 15 Texas State Senators in support of the Texas law.
“The SCOTUS ruling upholding Texas’ law creates important precedent establishing that age verification is a constitutional way to prevent children from accessing pornography online. This ruling paves the way for other states to pass similar legislation and will have a profound positive impact on preventing children from being exposed to pornography online,” said Dani Pinter, Senior Vice President and Director of the Law Center at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.
“All of the world’s most abusive, violent, and racist pornographic content is easily accessible to children online. That’s why today’s decision by the Supreme Court is so critical. Now children in Texas will have a measure of protection from accessing pornography websites that are rampant with content that includes sexual assault, rape, child sexual abuse, image-based sexual abuse, along with other violent and racist themes.
“Age verification is one part of a multi-layered approach for protecting kids from accessing harmful pornography, and we hope that more states will consider age verification solutions, device filter legislation, and the App Store Accountability Act,” Pinter said.
Online pornography is a powerful stimulus that is disruptive to children’s development contributing to numerous harms including vulnerability to sexual victimization, child-on-child harmful sexual behaviors, high-risk sexual behaviors, and compulsive sexual behaviors. A new report reveals pornography website algorithms take users to more extreme material, desensitizing them, and spurring their escalation to more extreme videos including child sexual abuse material and acting out what they see on real children. (More: Quick Facts on the Harms of Pornography.)
About National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE)
Founded in 1962, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) is the leading national non-profit 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.
To schedule an interview with NCOSE, please contact press@ncose.com.
