The Scotus Decision Dump

Supreme Court Building By Jesse Collins — Imported from 500px (archived version) by the Archive Team. (detail page), CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71470659

In the immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision dump on Friday, June 27th, some teacher friends concluded that the cases were a literal shit show. While there were certainly some concerning aspects of the cases, the ultimate outcomes could have been substantially worse.

In the first case, Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton, the court upheld an anti-pornography law in Texas that restricted access to explicit materials via the internet unless the user could prove through government-issued identification that they were 18 or older. Opponents of the law argued that the language was excessively vague and burdened adults’ access to pornography. Yet the court, in a six-to-three opinion, claimed the law “only incidentally burdens the protected speech of adults.”[1]

While there will always be debates about privacy, free speech, and government regulation, the court allowed Texas’s law to stand. I’m sure some free speech advocates will recoil at the decision. Still, Texas’s law is a reasonable compromise that protects minors from harmful material while preserving free speech laws for adults.