FSC Asks Supreme Court to Block Texas AV Law During Appeal

WASHINGTON—Counsel representing the Free Speech Coalition and a plaintiff class of parent companies who own the largest adult platforms in the world have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to temporarily block the state of Texas from enforcing its controversial age verification law, House Bill (HB) 1181, while they appeal to the high court. This application was filed directly to Associate Justice Samuel Alito. Alito, the conservative justice who penned the majority opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade and stripped constitutional abortion rights, serves as the circuit justice for the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. In the judicial appeals system, Supreme Court justices are tasked with presenting cases from their assigned appeals circuits for review by the nine-member court. If there is cause to hear the case at the high court, a writ of certiorari is granted to elevate the case from an appeals court to the high court for a final ruling. AVN reported last week that the plaintiffs' counsel, attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union, and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP filed a petition for a writ of certiorari to have the case reviewed by the high court. "This court should stay the judgment entered by the Fifth Circuit, thereby restoring the district court’s preliminary injunction, pending resolution of applicants’ petition for a writ of certiorari," argues Derek L. Shaffer of Quinn Emanuel, counsel of record, in the application for stay. Shaffer refers to the preliminary injunction granted by Senior U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra of the Western District of Texas blocking HB 1181. Ezra declared the law, which initially required adult platforms operating in the Texas digital space to verify the age of each user and publish pseudoscientific health warnings about porn use, as potentially unconstitutional. He granted a preliminary injunction enjoining the state of Texas from enforcing the law during the remainder of the litigation. After Texas appealed to the Fifth Circuit, the notoriously conservative appeals court overturned Ezra's ruling and said that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his office could begin enforcing the law, but without the health warning requirement. Shortly after, Paxton filed lawsuits against the parent companies of Pornhub, xHamster, and Stripchat in Travis County, Texas, courts. "In the alternative, this court should issue an injunction temporarily enjoining Texas from enforcing the act’s age-verification provisions while the Court decides whether to grant the petition," adds Shaffer. "At a minimum or in parallel, this court may direct Texas to respond to the contemporaneously filed petition on a timetable that would allow the Court to consider the petition before adjourning for the summer." The high court typically enters recess from the middle of summer, typically early July, until the first Monday in October of that same year.