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Texas prohibits the distribution of sexually explicit content to children. Texas enacted H. B. 1181, which requires certain commercial websites that publish sexually explicit content to verify the ages of their visitors. The statute applies to any “commercial entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material on an Internet website, . . . more than one-third of which is sexual material harmful to minors.” H. B. 1181 requires the use of reasonable age verification methods . . . to verify that an individual attempting to access the material is 18 years of age or older. A covered entity must require visitors to “comply with a commercial age verification system” that uses “government-issued identification” or “a commercially reasonable method that relies on public or private transactional data.” If a commercial entity knowingly violates H. B. 1181, D may sue to enjoin the violation, recover a civil penalty of up to $10,000 per day, as well as an additional penalty of up to $250,000 if any minors access covered sexual material as a result of the violation. At least 21 other States have imposed materially similar age-verification requirements to access sexual material that is harmful to minors online. Ps, a trade association for the pornography industry, a group of companies that operate pornographic websites, and a pornography performer sued D to enjoin enforcement of the statute as facially unconstitutional under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. The District Court granted Ps a preliminary injunction after concluding that they were likely to succeed on their claim. The court held that H. B. 1181 is subject to “strict scrutiny.” Thus, the law would be constitutional only if Texas could show that it “(1) serves a compelling governmental interest, (2) is narrowly tailored to achieve it, and (3) is the least restrictive means of advancing it.” The court found that Texas had failed to “show that H. B. 1181 is narrowly tailored and the least restrictive means of advancing their interest. It held that encouraging parents to install content-filtering software on their children’s devices would be a less restrictive means of accomplishing the State’s objective. The Court of Appeals held that Ps were unlikely to succeed on the merits. It held that the law only incidentally implicates “the privacy of those adults” seeking to access the regulated content. Since minors have no First Amendment right to access such materials, the court held that the law was “subject only to rational-basis review.” The court concluded that H. B. 1181 survived Ps’ challenge because its “age-verification requirement is rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in preventing minors’ access to pornography.” Ps appealed. Ps contend that the law must survive strict scrutiny because it imposes a content-based regulation on protected speech. D argues that the statute is subject only to rational-basis review because it does not burden any protected speech.

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