by Orly Salik* 

The Supreme Court ruled in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton that a statute requiring individuals to verify their ages before accessing sexually explicit content triggers, and satisfies, intermediate scrutiny. Employing a novel form of First Amendment analysis, the Court found that because access to sexually explicit content is protected as to adults, but not as to children, this form of speech on the whole is only “partially protected.” This Contribution argues that the majority’s new rule, applying intermediate rather than strict scrutiny to “partially protected” speech, in fact limits the scope of Paxton’s applicability. The case should not be construed as providing a broad mandate for age verification laws across the internet because, unlike most other online content, sexually explicit material is a narrow category of speech that is excluded from First Amendment protections for minors. A broader reading of the decision would contravene existing precedent regarding the speech rights of minors and impermissibly lower the standard of constitutional review for any speech deemed inappropriate for children. Thus, Paxton must not be read to endorse the use of intermediate scrutiny for any other restriction on material harmful to minors.

Since the advent of the internet, there has been a growing youth mental health crisis associated with addiction to pornography.1 Early consumption of this adult entertainment content—which has been linked with depression, a rise in sexual violence, and the normalization of sexism and objectification—has become increasingly common among youths.2 In response, twenty-five states have enacted laws requiring users of adult entertainment sites to verify that they are above the age of eighteen by submitting government-issued identification before gaining access to such material.3 These laws have caused traffic to adult entertainment websites to drop by as much as 80%,4 as users, fearing social stigmatization and data breaches, are unwilling to share their personal data in exchange for website access.5 This chilling effect on access to constitutionally protected speech6 spurred a wave of legal challenges, culminating in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, wherein the Supreme Court concluded that Texas’ H.B. 1181—a law requiring commercial websites that publish sexually explicit content to implement age verification measures—triggered intermediate scrutiny, passed constitutional muster, and did not infringe on First Amendment rights of adults or minors.7

The Supreme Court has long recognized that the government may limit minors’ access to content deemed obscene for their age group.8 Indeed, obscene content, or content containing “prurient, patently offensive depiction[s] . . . of sexual conduct” and lacking “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value,” is not protected by the First Amendment for any age group.9 Where the distinction lies, however, is that sexually explicit content considered obscene for minors is not necessarily obscene for adults. Courts have consistently found that the government cannot “reduce the adult population . . . to [consuming] only what is fit for children.”10 As such, adults maintain a First Amendment right to access sexual content, including pornographic videos and films, as a form of protected speech.11 However, in Paxton, the Supreme Court for the first time redefined this as a conditional right. The Court held that while adults are entitled to access sexually explicit content under the First Amendment, the age dependent nature of that right allows for age verification requirements as a permissible precondition to its exercise.12 And because sexually explicit content on the whole receives only “partial protection” under the First Amendment, the Court applied a reduced level of scrutiny to reach its conclusion.13 But “it is a fact of life—and also of law— that children and adults do not live in hermetically sealed boxes,” and regulatory measures that target children, like age verification requirements, necessarily impact the constitutional rights of adults.14 For this reason, the decision in Paxton requires careful application lest it be construed to encroach upon the First Amendment’s vigorous protection of free and open discourse.

While Paxton permits adults’ right to access sexually explicit speech to be conditional on age verification, its narrow holding must not be interpreted as an endorsement of lowered constitutional scrutiny for any law requiring age verification to access material potentially harmful to minors. Whereas sexual content has always been deemed inappropriate such that children’s access to such content has never been protected under the First Amendment, other categories of speech, such as discussions of critical race theory or LGBTQ+ identities, risk being arbitrarily or improperly labeled as unsuitable for children if Paxton’s logic is extended too far.15 Even now, certain states are requiring age verification with government-issued identification to access social media sites due to their harmful effect on minors, irrespective of the swaths of protected content housed on these sites.16 Read too broadly, Paxton threatens to become a mandate for bypassing minors’ First Amendment right to access controversial or political speech and for impermissibly restricting adults from accessing protected speech under the guise of protecting minors.

In an alarming break from precedent, the Paxton majority sidestepped strict scrutiny, the highest level of constitutional review traditionally applied to content-based laws, or laws that target speech based solely on the content espoused. The First Amendment exists to preserve the free exchange of ideas vital to a democratic society, and courts have recognized that content-based restrictions on speech frustrate that purpose and warrant a watchful eye.17 The Texas law challenged in Paxton, which restricts access to pornography websites, singles out material for regulation based on the fact that it is deemed harmful to minors.18 The age restriction is applied to speech purely based on its content as opposed to in spite of its content.19 Thus, Texas’ H.B. 1181 is a content-based law, making it presumptively unconstitutional and traditionally subject to the highest level of scrutiny.20 Strict scrutiny is the most exacting form of constitutional review, requiring that content-based laws restricting speech be narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government interest.21 By subjecting a content-based law to intermediate rather than strict scrutiny, the Paxton decision represents a significant departure from established First Amendment jurisprudence.22 But this departure must be understood in the limited context of sexually explicit speech, the narrow context in which the Paxton decision operates. Extending Paxton’s logic any further threatens to jeopardize our most foundational First Amendment protections.

The danger of the Paxton decision is that, despite departing from traditional jurisprudence and dismissing strict scrutiny, the Court did not actually dispute that Texas’ age verification restriction on adult entertainment sites is a content-based law. In fact, the majority explicitly acknowledged that the law “targets speech that is obscene for minors based on its communicative content.”23 Nonetheless, the Court made the unprecedented—and largely unexpected24—move to apply intermediate scrutiny to the Texas law regulating online adult entertainment content based on its content.25 In general, intermediate scrutiny is reserved for content-neutral laws, or laws that are “justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech.”26 Content-neutral laws, such as time, place, manner restrictions or laws not principally aimed at the regulation of speech, restrict speech without discriminating on the basis of the viewpoint being conveyed.27 Thus, laws that “incidentally burden” expressive acts in the course of regulating other conduct are considered content-neutral and trigger intermediate scrutiny.28

The Paxton Court readily admits that Texas’ H.B. 1181 is neither content-neutral nor a law that merely incidentally burdens expressive speech. Nevertheless, the Court found that intermediate scrutiny can also apply when a content-based law imposes an “incidental[] burden” on speech that is “partially protect[ed]”—in this case, sexually explicit speech protected for adults but not for minors.29 This newly minted form of intermediate scrutiny review of content-based laws is troublesome insofar as it erodes the traditionally strong protections against goverment speech regulations indicating favoritism for particular viewpoints. But while the Court’s decision in Paxton undeniably constricts adults’ First Amendment right to access the specific class of material that is unprotected as to minors, including pornography, its creation of a lesser class of “partially protected” speech must be read narrowly. Otherwise, the holding risks subverting the Court’s own longstanding precedent which prohibits burdening access to constitutionally protected material online for both minors and adults alike.

The novel “partial protection” rationale employed in Paxton limits the decision specifically to sexually explicit material and should be understood as such. Because the majority is insistent that lowered constitutional scrutiny may be applied only because sexually explicit content is not fully covered by the First Amendment,30 the Paxton decision actually creates a strong framework for challenging age verification in settings where the constitutional protection of the material being restricted is undisputed. Recently, states have unduly capitalized on the rise of online age verification policies, with Ohio, California, Utah, Arkansas, North Dakota, and Texas going so far as to require government-issued verification to access popular social media websites, such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. These laws are principally concerned with mitigating the “serious and urgent concerns . . . about the effects of social media on young people’s mental well-being,” including increases in anxiety and depression.31 Nonetheless, these measures promise to be the next frontier in the battle for First Amendment protection online because they are impermissible content-based laws, singling out social media sites above others for regulation32 and infringing on access to protected content, from political to social to artistic speech.33 Existing precedent does not sanction these types of laws, and Paxton should not be construed to do so either.

Take, for example, Arkansas’s “Social Media Safety Act,” which requires social media platforms to verify the age of all account holders residing in the state.34 Like the Texas law challenged in Paxton, the Arkansas statute requires covered websites to employ “reasonable age verification methods,” including the submission of government-issued identification to verify the age of users.35 But unlike the sexually explicit content targeted by the Texas law, “[i]t is undisputed that adults and minors use [platforms like Facebook and Instagram] to engage in constitutionally protected speech.”36 Therefore, because these platforms are among “the most important places . . . for the exchange of views,” they are entitled to “the highest protection from governmental intrusion.”37 Prior to Paxton, courts correctly leaned toward striking down social media age verification laws as unconstitutional, and to date, seven statutes requiring age verification for social media websites have been enjoined by district courts across the country.38 Despite this overarching consensus that these laws are a betrayal of the foundational democratic ideals protected by the First Amendment, the Fifth Circuit recently declined to uphold a lower court’s injunction of Mississippi’s social media age verification law, leaving policies of this ilk on uncertain legal footing.39 Because much of this litigation commenced pre-Paxton, how the Supreme Court’s decision will affect the analysis moving forward remains an open question. However, as the content on social media websites writ large does not fall into an unprotected category of speech such as obscenity, they cannot and should not be said to fall into Paxton’s new category of “partially protected” speech. These restrictive statutes fly in the face of First Amendment protections, and there is no reason, under the logic of Paxton, to subject them to a lower standard of constitutional review.

There are, of course, important distinctions between age verification laws for pornography and those for social media websites, and some might argue that the social media regulations impose less of a burden than those targeting adult entertainment platforms. As applied to adult entertainment websites, age verification requirements raise First Amendment concerns because of their distinct chilling effect; adults do not want to submit their government-issued identification before accessing explicit content out of fear that they will suffer reputational harm or moral judgment.40 In contrast, the widespread acceptance of social media use does not raise the same concerns of social stigmatization.41 And, while adult entertainment websites typically offer users a degree of anonymity,42 social media platforms already collect vast amounts of personally identifying information from account holders, including name, birth date, phone number, email address, and location.43 Indeed, most people who access social media sites already presume that this data is not secure.44 The added ask for age verification on social media websites, therefore, may not deter as many users of social media sites as with pornography websites. As such, the resulting First Amendment injury could seem less severe. But a smaller infringement on one’s constitutional rights must not be interpreted as a sanction to bulldoze the doctrinal protections that have historically been in place.

Any diminished chilling effect associated with age restrictions on social media sites writ large does not overcome the presumption that the types of content available on these sites—including political speech, expressive speech, and speech on matters of public concern—are entitled to robust First Amendment protections across all age groups.45 In contrast to Paxton, an analysis of social media age restrictions must focus on the ban on minors’ access to speech rather than the burden, incidental or otherwise, that might chill adults. Unlike sexually explicit material, which is patently unprotected for minors, the expressive content found on social media sites is protected for everyone.46 The logic of Paxton does not hold when applied to speech which minors and adults both have an unfettered constitutional right to access. Texas’ age verification law could only burden access to constitutionally protected speech because, “when the First Amendment partially protects speech . . . the government may impose certain content-based restrictions on it.”47 The problem with applying these laws to social media sites is not only the “chill” adults might experience, but the outright denial of access to protected speech minors would face. To read Paxton as an endorsement of social media age verification polices plainly contradicts the foundation of the First Amendment.

Because there exists an unequivocal right to free expression online, Paxton’s holding should not be construed to usher in an uninhibited future of age verification laws online. Most importantly, if extended too far, a broad reading of Paxton threatens to swallow the First Amendment. In an age where LGBTQ+ identities, the history of slavery and colonialism, and debates on reproductive rights have been deemed by some to be inappropriate for minors,48 the Paxton majority’s use of intermediate scrutiny for “partially protected” speech cannot be interpreted to allow lowered constitutional review for laws intended to “suppress [speech] solely to protect the young from ideas or images that a legislative body thinks unsuitable for them.”49 Perhaps there should be stronger parental controls before children are granted unfettered access to the internet. Perhaps limiting social media usage would do wonders to prevent anxiety, depression, and attention issues among teenagers. But the First Amendment does not bend to good policy, and regulatory limitations on youths’ access to online content should not abridge their fundamental rights, nor should it trample the rights of adults in the process.

* Orly Salik is a J.D. Candidate (2026) at New York University School of Law. This Contribution is a commentary on the problem at the 2025 William B. Spong Moot Court Competition at William & Mary Law School. One of the questions presented was whether age verification laws for sexually explicit content violate the First Amendment, analogous to the facts in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, 606 U.S. 461 (2025). This Contribution examines the Court’s recent decision in that case and distills one side of the argument. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the author’s views.

1. New Report Reveals Truths About How Teens Engage with Pornography, Common Sense Media (Jan. 10, 2023), https://www.commonsensemedia.org/press-releases/new-report-reveals- truths-about-how-teens-engage-with-pornography.

2. Protection of children from the harmful impacts of pornography, UNICEF https://www.unicef.org/harmful-content-online.

3. Louisiana passed a law in 2022 requiring the use of age verification on websites that contain a “substantial portion,” defined as 33.33%, of adult entertainment content. Eight states passed copycat legislation in 2023. As of 2025, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming all have age verification laws on the books restricting access to adult entertainment content. Age Verification Bill Tracker, Free Speech Coal. Action Ctr. (Jun. 30, 2025), https://action.freespeechcoalition.com/age-verification-bills/.

4. Marc Novicoff, A Simple Law Is Doing the Impossible. It’s Making the Online Porn Industry Retreat, POLITICO (Aug. 8, 2023, 4:30 PM), https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/08/08/age-law-online-porn-00110148.

5. See Free Speech Coal. Inc. v. Rokita, 738 F.Supp. 3d 1041, 1049 (S.D. Ind. 2024) (recognizing that 66% of Americans are uncomfortable with sharing their identification documents or biometric information online); Free Speech Coal., Inc. v. Colmenero, 689 F. Supp.3d 373, 399 (W.D. Tex. 2023) (observing that the submission of a government-issued identification before engaging in stigmatic behavior has been found to constitute a deterrent effect on accessing speech).

6. See Butler v. Michigan, 352 U.S. 380, 383 (1957) (protecting adults’ right to access sexually explicit speech under the First Amendment).

7. Free Speech Coal., Inc. v. Paxton, 606 U.S. 461 (2025).

8. See, e.g., Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629, 634–35 (1968) (permitting an obscenity statute limiting the sale of magazines deemed “harmful to minors” only to adults to stand).

9. See Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 26 (1973) (defining the modern obscenity standard).

10. Butler, 352 U.S. at 383.

11. Importantly, First Amendment protections apply to both content itself and the ability to access said content. Sexually explicit content is protected as to adults, and adults thereby have a right to access it. See, e.g., United States v. Playboy Ent. Grp., 529 U.S. 803, 811 (2000) (affirming that adults have a constitutional right to access pornographic television); Jenkins v. Georgia, 418 U.S. 153, 155 (1974) (finding that a sexually explicit film is protected speech).

12. Paxton, 606 U.S. at 492.

13. Id. at 494.

14. Id. at 500 (Kagan, J., dissenting).

15. See, e.g., Why is Critical Race Theory Dangerous For Our Kids?, Off. of Senator Marsha Blackburn (Jul. 12, 2021), https://www.blackburn.senate.gov/2021/7/why-is-critical-race-theory-dangerous-for-our-kids.

16. To date, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia have passed laws requiring websites to employ commercially reasonable age verification methods to determine a user’s age. See U.S. state age assurance laws for social media, The Age Verification Providers Ass’n, https://avpassociation.com/us-state-age-assurance-laws-for-social-media/ (last visited Oct. 24, 2025).

17. See, e.g., Nat’l Rifle Ass’n of Am. v. Vullo, 602 U.S. 175, 187 (2024) (noting that the prohibition of speech is “uniquely harmful to a free and democratic society”).

18. See Paxton, 606 U.S. at 505 (Kagan, J., dissenting) (“[W]hether expression qualifies as [‘sexual material harmful to minors’] depends entirely on what it depicts. If the website has the requisite sexually explicit content, the regulation kicks in. Alternatively, if that content is absent (if, say, the website focuses on politics or sports), the regulation does not. That is about as content-based as it gets.”).

19. See id. at 503 (noting that H.B. 1181 “imposes [a] burden [on speech] based on the speech’s content”).

20. That content-based laws are subject to strict scrutiny is well-settled. See, e.g., Reed v. Town of Gilbert, 576 U.S. 155, 159 (2015) (subjecting a content-based law that imposed stringent regulations only on signs relating to nonprofit group meetings to strict scrutiny); Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 412 (1989) (subjecting a content-based law banning flag burning to strict scrutiny); R.A.V. v. St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377, 395–96 (1992) (subjecting a content-based law banning the display of symbolic hate speech to strict scrutiny).

21. Reed, 576 U.S. at 163.

22. See Paxton, 606 U.S. at 503 (Kagan, J., dissenting) (explaining that on four separate occasions, the Supreme Court applied strict scrutiny “when reviewing statues imposing similar content-based burdens on protected sexually explicit speech”).

23. Paxton, 606 U.S. at 492 (emphasis added).

24. In addition to departing from four existing Supreme Court precedents to apply intermediate scrutiny to a law burdening adult access to sexually explicit content—see Ashcroft v. Am. C.L. Union, 542 U.S. 656 (2004) (sexual content online); Reno v. Am. C.L. Union, 521 U.S. 844 (1997) (same); Playboy, 529 U.S. at 803 (cable pornography); Sable Commc’ns of Cal. v. Fed. Commc’ns Comm’n, 492 U.S. 115 (1989) (dial-a-porn services)—the Court also diverged from the standard of review applied below. The Fifth Circuit had accepted the State’s argument that rational basis review, as opposed to intermediate nor strict scrutiny, governed the challenge to H.B. 1181, relying on the Supreme Court’s decision in Ginsberg, 390 U.S. at 629. See Free Speech Coal., Inc. v. Paxton, 95 F.4th 263, 289 (5th Cir. 2024) (Higginbotham, J., dissenting) (explaining the Fifth Circuit’s reliance on rational basis review).

25. Paxton, 606 U.S. at 477.

26. See Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 791 (1989); see, also, e.g., Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U.S. 569, 574 (1941) (subjecting a regulation requiring all parades down a public street to obtain a special license to intermediate scrutiny because of its content neutrality); Kovacs v. Cooper, 336 U.S. 77, 85–9 (1949) (upholding a ban on the use of sound trucks and loud speakers on public streets because these were a restriction on the manner in which speech was espoused).

27. See, e.g., Cox, 312 U.S. at 574 (approving a content-neutral law regulating parades on public streets as a time, place, manner restriction); see also Reed, 576 U.S. at 184 (Kagan, J., concurring) (noting that the Supreme Court generally applies intermediate scrutiny to “time, place, or manner” speech regulations).

28. The “incidental burden” analysis is traditionally used in instances when “a limitation on conduct, having no connection with speech, happens to sweep in a person’s expressive act.” Paxton, 606 U.S. at 515 (Kagan, J., dissenting); see also United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 367 (1968) (outlining the incidental burden standard). For example, courts have applied this incidental burden analysis to a National Park Service regulation banning camping in the parks invoked to quash a sleep-in demonstration about homelessness, see Clark v. Cmty. for Creative Non-Violence, 468 U.S. 288, 289–91 (1984), and to a public nudity law invoked to regulate a club featuring expressive nude dancing, see Erie v. Pap’s A. M., 529 U.S. 277, 289 (2000).

29. Paxton, 606 U.S. at 495, 513.

30. See id. at 493 n.12 (construing content-based restrictions as permissible because of the “partially protected” nature of the speech at issue).

31. NetChoice v. Carr, No. 1:25-cv-2422-AT, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 121183, at *4–5 (N.D. Ga. June 26, 2025).

32. See id. at *26–7 (categorizing the social media age verification policy as content-based because of the numerous exceptions exempting news, email, networking, gaming, and shopping platforms from its reach).

33. The First Amendment offers full protection to a broad array of speech recognized as expressive, including video games, films, protests, and even corporate campaign donations. See, e.g., Brown v. Ent. Merchs. Ass’n, 564 U.S. 786 (2011) (video games); Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, 343 U.S. 495 (1952) (motion pictures); Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Cmty. Sch. Dist., 393 U.S. 503 (1969) (garments worn in protest of the Vietnam War); Citizens United v. Fed. Commc’ns Comm’n, 558 U.S. 310 (2010) (corporate campaign donations).

34. Ark. Code Ann. § 4-88-1101–4 (“Social Media Safety Act”) (“Act 689”).

35. See NetChoice LLC v. Griffin, No. 5:23-CV-5105, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 61278, at *3 (W.D. Ark. Mar. 31, 2025).

36. Id. at *8; see also Packingham v. North Carolina, 582 U.S. 98, 105 (2017) (noting that social media websites are used to “engage in a wide array of protected First Amendment activity on topics as diverse as human thought”).

37. Id. at 104; Reno, 521 U.S. at 863 (explaining policy justifications behind the First Amendment that might entitle the internet, a forum for mass communication, to higher protections).

38. Griffin, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 61278; NetChoice, LLC v. Fitch, 787 F. Supp. 3d 262 (S.D. Miss. 2025); NetChoice, LLC v. Yost, 716 F. Supp. 3d 539 (S.D. Ohio 2024); Comput. & Commc’ns Indus. Ass’n v. Paxton, 747 F. Supp. 3d 1011 (W.D. Tex. 2024); NetChoice, LLC v. Reyes, 748 F. Supp. 3d 1105 (Utah 2024); NetChoice, LLC v. Bonta, 770 F. Supp. 3d 1164 (N.D. Cal. 2025); Comput. & Commc’ns Indus. Ass’n v. Uthmeier, No. 4:24cv438-MW/MAF, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 104710 (N.D. Fla. June 3, 2025); NetChoice v. Carr, No. 1:25-cv-2422-AT, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 121183 (N.D. Ga. June 26, 2025).

39. See NetChoice v. Fitch, 134 F.4th 799 (5th Cir. 2025) (vacating a preliminary injunction of a Mississippi social media age verification law); but see NetChoice v. Fitch, 606 U.S. ____ (2025) (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (declining to vacate the stay but noting that the Mississippi law likely violates the First Amendment).

40. David Lang et al., Do Age-Verification Bills Change Search Behavior? A Pre-Registered Synthetic Control Multiverse 18–9 (OSF, Working Paper, 2025), [https://osf.io/z83ev] (predicting that the imposition of age verification laws to access adult entertainment websites results in a 51% reduction in searches for the dominant compliant platform).

41. Wendy G. Macdowall et al., Pornography Use Among Adults in Britain: A Qualitative Study of Patterns of Use, Motivations, and Stigma Management Strategies, 54 Arch Sex Behav. 1589, 1599 (2025) (explaining the particular stigmas associated with consumption of pornography).

42. See Am. C.L. Union v. Mukasey, 534 F.3d 181, 196 (3d Cir. 2008) (emphasizing that individuals value the anonymity online access to explicit material provides, and that laws forcing users to relinquish this anonymity have First Amendment concerns).

43. See, e.g., Giridhari Venkatadri et al., Investigating sources of PII used in Facebook’s targeted advertising, 1 Procs. on Priv. Enhancing Techs. 227, 229 (2019), [https://doi.org/10.2478/popets-2019-0013].

44. On average, only 9% of Americans are “very confident” that social media websites are protecting their data, and more than half are not confident their data is safe. See Lee Raine, Americans’ complicated feelings about social media in an era of privacy concerns, Pew Rsch. Ctr. (Mar. 27, 2018) https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/03/27/americans-complicated-feelings-about-social-media-in-an-era-of-privacy-concerns/?scrlybrkr=4ca9867.

45. See, e.g., Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U.S. 443, 451 (2011) (“Speech on matters of public concern is at the heart of the First Amendment’s protection.”) (cleaned up); see also Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 558 U.S. 310, 349 (2010) (highlighting that political speech receives strong First Amendment protection).

46. Brown, 564 U.S. at 794–95 (declining to extend the obscenity exception to violent materials, even in regard to minors, because “[m]inors are entitled to a significant measure of First Amendment protection, and only in relatively narrow and well-defined circumstances may government bar public dissemination of protected materials to them.”).

47. Paxton, 606 U.S. at 493 n.12.

48. See, e.g., Mahmoud v. Taylor, 606 U.S. ___ (2025) (Thomas, J., concurring) (acknowledging that children’s books with gay themes might be considered inappropriate).

49. Erznoznik v. Jacksonville, 422 U.S. 205, 213–14 (1975) (striking down an ordinance prohibiting films containing nudity from being displayed on publicly visible screens).