## Facts

- Texas enacted a statute requiring certain websites that publish sexual material deemed “harmful to minors” to implement “reasonable age-verification methods” before granting access to that content.
- The statute also required covered websites to display state-prescribed “health warnings” about pornography in a specified format.
- The Texas Attorney General was authorized to enforce the statute through civil actions seeking injunctions and civil penalties.
- Free Speech Coalition, Inc., along with other adult-content producers and distributors, sued the Attorney General in federal district court seeking declaratory and injunctive relief.
- Plaintiffs alleged the statute burdened protected adult speech, compelled speech, and operated in an overbroad manner.
- The district court granted a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of the challenged provisions.
- The Attorney General appealed the preliminary injunction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

## Issues

1. Whether the statute is a content-based restriction on protected speech triggering heightened First Amendment review.
2. Whether mandated age verification impermissibly burdens adults’ access to lawful sexual expression and chills anonymous viewing.
3. Whether the required health warnings constitute compelled speech, and what level of scrutiny applies to those disclosures.
4. Whether the statute is narrowly tailored in light of less speech-restrictive means to protect minors.
5. Whether the district court properly applied the preliminary-injunction factors (likelihood of success, irreparable harm, balance of equities, public interest).

## Decision

- The Fifth Circuit reviewed the district court’s preliminary injunction order in an interlocutory appeal.
- The court evaluated the challenged age-verification and warning-label requirements under First Amendment doctrines governing content-based regulation, burdens on adult access to protected speech, and compelled speech.
- The court addressed whether plaintiffs had shown a likelihood of success on their constitutional claims and whether the remaining preliminary-injunction factors supported interim relief pending final adjudication.

## Legal Principles

- Regulations that turn on the communicative content of speech are generally treated as content-based and are subject to heightened First Amendment scrutiny.
- Laws aimed at protecting minors from sexual material may not substantially burden adults’ access to constitutionally protected, non-obscene expression.
- Identification or age-verification requirements can chill speech by deterring access and reducing anonymity, which is relevant to assessing constitutional burden and tailoring.
- Compelled messages imposed on private speakers are scrutinized under compelled-speech doctrine; disclosures that are not purely factual and uncontroversial are less likely to receive deferential review.
- In First Amendment cases, threatened or ongoing loss of expressive freedoms is commonly treated as irreparable harm for preliminary-injunction purposes, and the public interest generally favors preventing enforcement of likely unconstitutional restrictions.

## Conclusion

The Fifth Circuit’s decision concerned whether preliminary injunctive relief was warranted against Texas’s age-verification and pornography warning-label mandates, focusing on content-based regulation, burdens on adult access to protected speech, compelled speech limits, tailoring, and the standard four-factor test for a preliminary injunction.


Free Speech Coal., Inc. v. Paxton, 95 F.4th 263 (5th Cir. 2024)