Amicus Curiae Brief — Free Speech Coalition, Inc., et al., Petitioners v. Ken Paxton, Attorney General of Texas
Supreme Court briefSep 23, 2024
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No. 23-1122
IN THE
Supreme Court of the United States
FREE SPEECH COALITION, ET AL.,
Petitioners,
v.
KEN PAXTON, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS
ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR THE STATE OF TEXAS,
Respondent.
On Writ of Certiorari to the
United States Court of Appeals
for the Fifth Circuit
BRIEF OF THE INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR
MISSING AND EXPLOITED CHILDREN
AS AMICUS CURIAE
IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONERS
JILLIAN LONDON
AMER S. AHMED
Counsel of Record
DANIEL R. ADLER
IASON TOGIAS
ZACHARY MONTGOMERY
GIBSON, DUNN & CRUTCHER LLP APRATIM VIDYARTHI
GIBSON, DUNN & CRUTCHER LLP
333 S. Grand Ave.
200 Park Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90017
New York, NY 10166
(212) 351 2427
KYLIE CALABRESE
GIBSON, DUNN & CRUTCHER LLP AAhmed@gibsondunn.com
811 Main St., Ste. 3000
Houston, TX 77002
Counsel for Amicus Curiae
i
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE ............................ 1
INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY OF
ARGUMENT ......................................................... 3
ARGUMENT ............................................................... 7
I.
THE FIFTH CIRCUIT WRONGLY APPLIED
RATIONAL BASIS SCRUTINY DESPITE
CONTROLLING PRECEDENT APPLYING STRICT
SCRUTINY ............................................................... 7
II. H.B. 1181 FAILS STRICT SCRUTINY BECAUSE IT
DOES NOT PROTECT CHILDREN, INVADES THEIR
FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS, AND IGNORES LESS
RESTRICTIVE, MORE EFFECTIVE ALTERNATIVES .... 8
A. H.B. 1181 Does Not Protect Children. ...........9
B. H.B. 1181 Will Have Unintended and
Dangerous Consequences for Children........14
C. Strict Scrutiny Ensures That Regulations
Protect Minors’ First Amendment Rights ...16
III. DEVICE-LEVEL AGE VERIFICATION WOULD BE
MORE EFFECTIVE AND SAFEGUARD PROTECTED
SPEECH ................................................................ 21
A. At Least Two Forms of Content Filtering
Would Be More Effective than WebsiteBased Age Verification. ................................22
B. Content Filtering Provides Significant
Advantages That Protect Children. .............24
C. Other Jurisdictions Already Have
Crafted Legislation More Narrowly
Tailored and More Effective. ........................27
CONCLUSION .......................................................... 28
ii
TABLE OF AUTHORITIES
Page(s)
Cases
Ashcroft v. ACLU,
542 U.S. 656 (2004) .................... 3, 7, 20, 21, 22, 23
Bd. of Educ. v. Pico,
457 U.S. 853 (1982) .............................................. 17
Brown v. Entm’t Merchs. Ass’n,
564 U.S. 786 (2011) .................................. 17, 20, 23
Carey v. Population Servs. Int’l,
431 U.S. 678 (1977) .............................................. 17
Edenfield v. Fane,
507 U.S. 761 (1993) ................................................ 8
Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Colmenero,
2023 WL 5655712
(W.D. Tex. Aug. 4, 2023) ...................... 9, 21, 23, 26
Ginsberg v. New York,
390 U.S. 629 (1968) ............................ 17, 20, 21, 23
Jacobellis v. Ohio,
378 U.S. 184 (1964) ........................................ 12, 17
Reno v. ACLU,
521 U.S. 844 (1997) ................................ 3, 7, 20, 23
Roth v. United States,
354 U.S. 476 (1957) .............................................. 18
Sable Commc’ns of California v. FCC,
492 U.S. 115 (1989) ............................................ 3, 7
Shelton v. Tucker,
364 U.S. 479 (1960) ................................................ 7
iii
United States v. Playboy Entm’t Grp.,
529 U.S. 803 (2000) .................... 5, 7, 20, 21, 22, 23
Statutes
Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Ann. § 129B.................. 5
Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Ann § 129B.001.......... 12
Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Ann. § 129B.002... 12, 17
Other Authorities
1.7 Million U.S. Children Fell Victim to Data
Breaches, According to Javelin’s 2022 Child
Identity Fraud Study, Javelin
(Oct. 26, 2022), https://tinyurl.com/3y83xjyj ....... 25
A.B. 3080, 2023–2024 Assemb., Reg. Sess.
(Cal. 2024) ............................................................ 27
Age Verification in the News,
PornHub Blog (Mar. 14, 2024),
https://tinyurl.com/y4pcuju8 ................................ 24
Alex Littlehales, As new pornography
verification law kicks in, Virginia ranks
highest in recent searches for VPN access,
13News Now (July 5, 2023),
https://tinyurl.com/yjm5j4ty ................................ 11
Aliza Vigderman, 2024 VPN Usage
Statistics, Security.org (Aug. 23, 2024),
https://tinyurl.com/362ukham ............................. 11
Ben Woods, The (almost) invisible men and
women behind the world’s largest porn sites,
The Next Web: Insider (Mar. 3, 2016),
https://tinyurl.com/5fvjkuu7 ................................ 13
iv
David Nield, Protect Your Home Wi-Fi Network
by Setting Up a VPN on Your Router,
WIRED (Apr. 25, 2024),
https://tinyurl.com/55ydhvre ............................... 11
Free Speech Coalition, Age Verification Bill
Tracker (2024), https://tinyurl.com/yb7kakyp ...... 6
Idaho public library announces it will become
adults-only library, cites Idaho
Legislature’s library bill, Idaho Press
(Sept. 2, 2024), https://tinyurl.com/f2x58j5k....... 19
The internet porn ‘epidemic’: By the numbers,
The Week (Jan. 8, 2015),
https://tinyurl.com/4d5y3zhr ............................... 13
Internet Society, Internet Society—Perspectives
on Internet Content Blocking: An Overview
(Mar. 2017) ........................................................... 13
Kari Paul, Pornhub removes millions of
videos after investigation finds child abuse
content, Guardian (Dec. 14, 2020),
https://tinyurl.com/3epfz6bz ................................ 14
Kyle Vanhemert, Fascinating Graphs Show
How Reddit Got Huge by Going
Mainstream, WIRED (Jan. 9, 2014),
https://tinyurl.com/4rpdz8ve ............................... 19
Lee Mathews, What Tor Is, And Why You
Should Use It To Protect your Privacy,
Forbes (Jan. 27, 2017),
https://tinyurl.com/2eewvhan .............................. 10
v
Majid Yar, Protecting children from Internet
pornography? A critical assessment of
statutory age verification and its enforcement
in the UK, 43 Policing: An International
Journal 183 (2019) ............................................... 14
Meghan McIntyre, Many pornography websites
aren’t complying with new Va. age verification law, Virginia Mercury (Aug. 23, 2023),
https://tinyurl.com/3nc6n6mm ............................ 14
Nadeem Sarwar, Pornhub Shutdown In Texas
Sends Users Scrambling For VPN Access,
SlashGear (Mar. 15, 2024),
https://tinyurl.com/5ebbh87n .............................. 10
Neil Thurman & Fabian Obster, The regulation
of internet pornography: What a survey of
under 18s tells us about the necessity for and
potential efficacy of emerging legislative
approaches, 13 Pol’y & Internet 415 (2021) ........ 16
Pandora Blake, Age verification for online porn:
more harm than good?, 6 Porn Studies 228 ........ 15
Parental Controls, FTC Consumer Advice
(Sept. 2011), https://tinyurl.com/2nsemz5c ......... 22
Pietro Ferrara et al., The Dark Side of the
Web—A Risk for Children and Adolescents
Challenged by Isolation during the Novel
Coronavirus 2019 Pandemic,
228 J. Pediatrics 324 (2021) .......................... 14, 15
vi
Press Release, ACLU, Free Speech Coalition and
Partners Urge Supreme Court to Strike Down
Unconstitutional Texas Law Burdening
Adult Access to Sexual Content,
ACLU (Apr. 12, 2024),
https://tinyurl.com/3mn4aadk ............................. 24
S.B. 104, 2024 Gen. Sess. (Utah 2024) ..................... 27
Shweta, What a VPN Hides (And What It
Doesn’t), Forbes (Oct. 19, 2023),
https://tinyurl.com/bdhfw583 .............................. 10
The Tor Project, www.torproject.org
(last visited Sept. 20, 2024) ................................. 11
Usage of virtual private networks (VPN)
worldwide as of 4th quarter 2023, by age and
gender, Statista (Apr. 25, 2024),
https://tnyurl.com/5ankuf9y ................................ 11
VPN overview for Apple device deployment,
Apple (Mar. 7, 2024),
https://tinyurl.com/3r7suznk ............................... 11
Zachary McAuliffe, Geo-Blocking Explained:
What to Know and How You Can Get
Around It, CNET (Dec. 16, 2023),
https://tinyurl.com/3tftn9sf.................................. 10
1
INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE 1
The International Centre for Missing & Exploited
Children (ICMEC) is a nonpartisan, global nonprofit
committed to advancing child protection and safeguarding vulnerable children around the world. The
Centre has worked for more than 25 years to foster
systemic change through thought leadership, research, capacity building for governmental agencies,
engagement with the technology and financial-services industries and their regulators, and by working
alongside partners in implementation efforts to keep
children safe. ICMEC believes that the best way for
it to serve children is to openly engage with policymakers, law enforcement, and industry leaders who
have a genuine interest in practical solutions to
achieve the common goal of building a safer world for
all children.
For ICMEC, digital age verification done correctly
is a critical component in efforts to protect children,
enhance online safety, and maintain ethical and legal
standards in the digital era. Age verification is necessary to ensure compliance with laws and regulations
related to explicit content. Serving as a protective
barrier, the correct age-verification measures, such as
content filtering through device-level age-verification,
can make it more challenging for children to access
harmful content, prevent unintentional exposure, and
enhance the protection of children. Such measures
more accurately filter adult content, while allowing
children to access non-adult content. Laws like Texas
H.B. 1181, however, which rely on website-based age
1
Amicus states that this brief was not authored in whole or in
part by counsel for any party, and that no person or entity other
than amicus, its members, or its counsel made a monetary contribution intended to fund the preparation or submission of this
brief.
2
verification, are an ineffective solution that will only
result in downstream harm to children, by encouraging the use of virtual private networks and encouraging children to visit websites unreachable by U.S.
laws. Such laws also chill children’s speech and their
parents’ rights to make decisions on what their children see.
There is a better way to protect children from
harmful content online: implementing age verification
and filtering content directly on devices, rather than
on websites. ICMEC understands that child protection is a global effort, and that the United States is a
leader in that effort, so it is of paramount importance
to strike the correct balance in achieving that goal.
3
INTRODUCTION AND
SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
This Court has consistently recognized that content-based restrictions on speech are subject to strict
scrutiny. See Ashcroft v. ACLU, 542 U.S. 656, 660
(2004) [hereinafter Ashcroft]. This is for good reason:
even well-intentioned laws abridging speech often
have harmful downstream effects. Texas H.B. 1181 is
a clear example. Obscene and salacious online content can be harmful to a child’s development and
should not be accessible to minors in the absence of
considered parental guidance. Although shielding minors from harmful content online is a compelling state
interest, the means chosen by Texas in H.B. 1181 to
achieve that interest are not narrowly tailored, burden far more speech than is necessary, and will cause
more harm than good to the children Texas seeks to
protect. H.B. 1181 will not protect children because it
does not meaningfully address the extent to which internet users can circumvent website-based age verification, nor does it consider the practical barriers to
enforcement across international borders. Perversely,
the law invites dangerous consequences for children
seeking adult content, including by directing them to
less regulated, more dangerous websites. The First
Amendment functions in part to deter government
from making enormous policy mistakes like those embodied in H.B. 1181—a law that is not remotely calibrated to achieve its stated purpose.
The decision below conflicts irreconcilably with
this Court’s decisions in Ashcroft, 542 U.S. at 656,
Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844 (1997) [hereinafter Reno],
and Sable Communications of California v. FCC, 492
U.S. 115 (1989). Amicus agrees with the Free Speech
Coalition that this Court should correct the Fifth Circuit’s misstatement of controlling First Amendment
law in subjecting H.B. 1181 to rational basis review.
4
If left to stand, the Fifth Circuit’s improper resolution
of important First Amendment concerns will have deleterious consequences for children. In particular, the
decision below relieves state legislatures of their burden under strict scrutiny to consider less restrictive—
and, in this case, more effective—alternatives to website-level age verification. As Judge Higginbotham’s
thorough dissent observes, the record below “is bereft
of evidence responsive to the burdens of strict scrutiny.” Pet. App. 99a. It is precisely such evidence that
lawmakers must consider to ensure that speech-burdening laws designed to protect children online are effective in achieving their aims.
H.B. 1181 does not achieve lawmakers’ aims for
three reasons. First, it is ineffective. Under H.B.
1181, where more than a third of a website’s content
comprises “sexual material harmful to minors,” the
website must implement age verification. When implemented at the website or platform level, however,
age-verification systems can be avoided easily by using widely available virtual private networks
(“VPNs”) or private browsers, like The Onion Router
(“Tor”) network. Second, meaningful enforcement of
H.B. 1181 is impractical because the law cannot be enforced extraterritorially, where many websites hosting content harmful to minors are located. Third, in
light of those practical realities, H.B. 1181 does and
will continue to cause unintended harm. Both the Tor
network and offshore websites expose minors to separate risks, such as malware, trafficking, and predation. In effect, H.B. 1181’s age-verification requirement could steer minors to more harmful corners of
the internet where no such access limitation exists.
H.B. 1181 also suffers from vagueness and overbreadth problems, which impinge on minors’ own
First Amendment rights. H.B. 1181 vaguely imposes
age-verification requirements on websites if more
5
than one-third of their content comprises “sexual material harmful to minors”—but the law fails to define
how the volume of a website’s content is to be measured. H.B. 1181 Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Ann.
§ 129B. Combined with the statute’s expansive definition of “sexual material harmful to minors”—which
includes “descriptions” of genitals, pubic hair, or nipples (id. § 129B.001(6)(B))—websites available for access in Texas might be forced to self-censor under
threat of civil penalties if they risk crossing the onethird threshold under any measure. As a consequence, children are likely to be denied access to all
content on a website fearing the one-third threshold—
including content that is, by definition, not harmful to
minors. H.B. 1181 instead could have required websites to redact or sequester harmful content, but it
does not. There is no basis in this Court’s jurisprudence for such a sweeping restriction of children’s
First Amendment right to access non-obscene speech.
Content filtering is an alternative framework to
website-based age verification, which imposes a lesser
burden on speech. This Court has previously endorsed content filtering, in part because it can be carried out by parents and guardians, an approach this
Court has previously endorsed. United States v. Playboy Entm’t Grp., 529 U.S. 803, 824–825 (2000). Content filtering can also be implemented by device manufacturers through default settings that block harmful content on the basis of age verification at point-ofpurchase or securely through the device. Unlike website-based age verification, content filtering does not
require individuals to submit personal information to
websites on a case-by-case basis, which can reveal
sensitive or intimate preferences. Rather, verification
is completed on the device, before the user attempts to
access a particular website.
6
Content filtering, whether carried out by parents,
implemented by default on devices, or some combination thereof, is also a more effective means of protecting children from harmful online content. Requiring
the device to filter what content a child can see obviates the use of VPNs or private browsers to circumvent age verification. Content filtering also fits with
the Court’s longstanding preference for parental discretion and autonomy in child-rearing. Parents
should be free to choose which websites or platforms
are appropriate, and this discretion can best be
granted through content filtering.
The proliferation of overbroad and underinclusive
laws like H.B. 1181 threatens the future of child
safety online. Texas’s law is one of eight existing website-based age-verification laws. Pet. App. 8a n.11. At
least eighteen other states have introduced or prefiled website-based age-verification laws. Free Speech
Coalition, Age Verification Bill Tracker (2024),
https://tinyurl.com/yb7kakyp. The Fifth Circuit’s misstatement of how H.B. 1181 must be measured
against the First Amendment would relieve similar
laws of the scrutiny necessary to vet their constitutionality and effectiveness, which will result in harm
to the children these laws seek to serve. This Court
should reject the Fifth Circuit’s departure from settled
First Amendment doctrine.
7
ARGUMENT
I. THE FIFTH CIRCUIT WRONGLY APPLIED
RATIONAL BASIS REVIEW DESPITE
CONTROLLING PRECEDENT REQUIRING STRICT
SCRUTINY.
Content-based restrictions on protected speech are
subject to strict scrutiny. See Playboy, 529 U.S. at
813. Such restrictions “must be narrowly tailored to
promote a compelling Government interest,” and “[i]f
a less restrictive alternative would serve the Government’s purpose, the legislature must use that alternative.” Ibid. Applying that framework, this Court has
repeatedly held that, even where “a content-based restriction [is] designed to protect minors from viewing
harmful materials,” it will not survive strict scrutiny
if it also burdens adults’ access to protected speech,
“[a]bsent a showing that [a] proposed less restrictive
alternative would not be as effective.” Ashcroft, 542
U.S. at 670; see also Reno, 521 U.S. at 879; Sable
Commc’ns, 492 U.S. at 131.
Despite this clear directive, the Fifth Circuit declined to apply strict scrutiny to H.B. 1181, a statute
identical in all relevant respects to the Child Online
Protection Act—a law that criminalized the knowing
posting online of content “harmful to minors” (such as
sexual content) and that was subjected to strict scrutiny and enjoined in Ashcroft. 542 U.S. at 661–662;
see Pet. App. 12a–29a.
Strict scrutiny ensures that governments use their
broad, stifling power in restricting speech to achieve
“legitimate . . . aims,” minimizing the “legislative
abridgement of fundamental personal rights and liberties,” Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U.S. 479, 488–489
(1960) (cleaned up), while requiring the government
to show that its preferred approach is effective and
will materially alleviate the targeted harms. Playboy,
8
529 U.S. at 816; Edenfield v. Fane, 507 U.S. 761, 770–
771 (1993). By failing to apply strict scrutiny, the
Fifth Circuit failed to ensure that the Texas legislature’s chosen course of action addressed its purported
aims without causing additional harm. Perversely,
the decision below opens children up to serious harms.
It also ignores this Court’s mandate in Reno, Ashcroft,
and Playboy that, under strict scrutiny, the government choose or consider plausible, less restrictive alternatives that would be more effective.
H.B. 1181 will not protect children because it does
not meaningfully address the extent to which internet
users can circumvent website-based age verification,
nor does it consider the practical barriers to enforcement across international borders. Perversely, the
law invites dangerous consequences for children seeking adult content, including by directing them to less
regulated, more dangerous websites. In the process of
creating these harms, H.B. 1181 also undermines minors’ First Amendment rights and this Court’s precedent respecting parental choice in determining what
speech children consume. These harms to children
and to First Amendment rights could have been
avoided by mandating device-level age verification.
But because the Fifth Circuit failed to apply this
Court’s precedent requiring the application of strict
scrutiny, H.B. 1181 continues to harm children and
undermine the First Amendment.
II. H.B. 1181 FAILS STRICT SCRUTINY BECAUSE IT
DOES NOT PROTECT CHILDREN, INVADES THEIR
FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS, AND IGNORES LESS
RESTRICTIVE, MORE EFFECTIVE
ALTERNATIVES.
Shielding minors from pornographic content is a
compelling state interest, but H.B. 1181 does not
achieve that interest. To the contrary, in addition to
9
burdening the access of adults to protected speech, the
statute does not protect children from pornographic
content, impinges on their First Amendment rights,
and, perversely, makes them more vulnerable to serious harm than they were before. H.B. 1181 is also unnecessary because there is a less restrictive and more
effective alternative to the website-level age verification it requires: device-level age verification.
A. H.B. 1181 Does Not Protect Children.
H.B. 1181 fails to protect children from pornographic content because it is largely unenforceable for
three reasons: (1) the law does nothing to address the
various ways internet users can circumvent websitebased age verification; (2) Texas will not be able to police the vast and ever-growing number of pornographic websites; and (3) the law will leave children
free to access unregulated offshore websites.
1. Minors have easy access to tools that
allow them to evade website-level
controls.
H.B. 1181 does nothing to address the use of widely
available, straightforward means of circumventing
website-based age verification. The law seeks to limit
minors’ ability to access purportedly pornographic
websites from within Texas. Websites infer a user’s
location by determining the geolocation of that user’s
Internet Protocol (“IP”) address. See Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Colmenero, 2023 WL 5655712 (W.D.
Tex. Aug. 4, 2023), ECF No. 5-2. But it is easy for
users to make it appear as if they are somewhere they
aren’t. They can circumvent IP-based geolocation
through the use of VPNs, the Tor network, or other
technologies designed to mask IP addresses, all of
which disguise a user’s location.
10
VPN servers are freely and widely available on the
internet. A VPN server hides users’ original IP addresses by encrypting the “tunnel” between their device and the server when the users connect to the internet via the server. Shweta, What a VPN Hides
(And What It Doesn’t), Forbes (Oct. 19, 2023),
https://tinyurl.com/bdhfw583. When a user connects
to a VPN, the VPN acts as the user’s agent—making
website requests on the user’s behalf. Ibid. The website being accessed thinks that the VPN server, rather
than the end user, is requesting access; it therefore
uses the VPN server’s location and not the user’s location. Ibid. See also Zachary McAuliffe, Geo-Blocking
Explained: What to Know and How You Can Get
Around It, CNET (Dec. 16, 2023), https://tinyurl.
com/3tftn9sf. A child in Texas can use a VPN to make
it seem to an adult website that the child is in New
York, Timbuktu, Antarctica, or anywhere else where
users are not subject to digital age verification. The
website, believing that the child is not in Texas, will
not ask for digital proof of age.
The Tor network is a similar location-concealing
tool. It uses even more layers, masking a user’s location multiple times. Data on the Tor network is encrypted as it moves through a system of relays. Lee
Mathews, What Tor Is, And Why You Should Use It
To Protect your Privacy, Forbes (Jan. 27, 2017),
https://tinyurl.com/2eewvhan. A website sees only the
IP address, and hence geolocation, of the last Tor relay. Ibid.
Interest in these workarounds skyrocketed after
the introduction of H.B. 1181 and similar bills. For
example, in the days following PornHub’s withdrawal
from Texas, “traffic for VPN searches . . . shot up by
over 1,500 percent.” Nadeem Sarwar, Pornhub Shutdown In Texas Sends Users Scrambling For VPN Ac-
11
cess, SlashGear (Mar. 15, 2024), https://tinyurl.com/5ebbh87n. This increased Texan interest is
not unique: the same thing happened last year after
Virginia enacted a law similar to H.B. 1181, with Virginia internet users leading the “searches for ‘VPN’ or
‘virtual private network.’” Alex Littlehales, As new
pornography verification law kicks in, Virginia ranks
highest in recent searches for VPN access, 13News
Now (July 5, 2023), https://tinyurl.com/yjm5j4ty.
These tools are not just for the tech savvy. They
are readily accessible, nationally advertised, and easy
to use. VPNs are available as default tools on
iPhones, and can also be downloaded and installed
within seconds on a browser or desktop operating system. See, e.g., VPN overview for Apple device deployment,
Apple
(Mar.
7,
2024),
https://tinyurl.com/3r7suznk; David Nield, Protect Your Home
Wi-Fi Network by Setting Up a VPN on Your Router,
WIRED (Apr. 25, 2024), https://tinyurl.com/55ydhvre.
Open-source tools to access the Tor network are free
and easily downloadable. See The Tor Project,
www.torproject.org (last visited Sept. 20, 2024). According to one survey, 29% of people use VPNs for personal use. Aliza Vigderman, 2024 VPN Usage Statistics, Security.org (Aug. 23, 2024), https://tinyurl.com/362ukham. Another survey found that
20% of females and 32% of males between the ages of
sixteen and twenty-four use VPNs. Usage of virtual
private networks (VPN) worldwide as of 4th quarter
2023, by age and gender, Statista (Apr. 25, 2024),
https://tnyurl.com/5ankuf9y.
Given the growing popularity of these locationmasking tools and the ease with which they can be accessed, H.B. 1181 does little in practice to limit minors’ access to adult content.
12
2. Texas will not be able to police most
pornographic websites.
H.B. 1181 regulates any website whose content is
more than one-third “harmful” content. But because
of the large amount of adult content on the internet,
Texas will not be able to police age verification for
websites that cross this one-third threshold.
As an initial matter, H.B. 1181 fails to explain how
the state intends to measure the “one-third” threshold
for content hosted on a website. H.B. 1181, Tex. Civ.
Prac. & Rem. Code Ann. § 129B.002. It is unclear
whether that threshold is measured by the size of the
files, whether the one-third metric also encompasses
user-generated content (such as direct messages between users), or whether enforcement agencies might
use other unspecified metrics. The number of websites falling within this one-third threshold could vary
significantly based on what metric is used to measure
“one-third.” Nor is the law limited to major commercial adult websites: any blog, communications platform, or plaintext website is covered, which vastly expands the reach of the law.
To compound the problem, it is difficult to define
obscenity or “hard core pornography.” Jacobellis v.
Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 197 (1964) (Stewart, J., concurring). Although H.B. 1181 attempts to define “sexual
material harmful to minors” by using this Court’s
guidance, the definition is still subjective and depends
on “contemporary community standards” and the
“prurient interest.” H.B. 1181, Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem.
Code Ann § 129B.001(6)(A). Yet H.B. 1181 does not
specify whose community standards apply. It is unclear whether the Texas legislature defines those community standards, or whether each county, city, or
town gets to apply its own community standards, such
that websites satisfying the community standards of
13
one locality might nonetheless be subject to age-verification in another.
Even if the legislature could clearly identify websites that have “sexual material harmful to minors,”
by some estimates 12% of all websites are pornographic and 266 new pornographic websites appear
online every day. The internet porn ‘epidemic’: By the
numbers, The Week (Jan. 8, 2015), https://tinyurl.com/4d5y3zhr. As such, the government will
constantly be playing catch up—it will have to identify
which of these many websites pass the one-third
threshold, or else it will simply address only a small
subset of websites that contain adult content.
Given the breadth of the internet, the difficulty of
defining “harmful” content, and the complexity of
measuring how much of a website is devoted to such
content, Texas cannot efficiently or effectively identify
and penalize non-complying websites. Texas will be
left playing whack-a-mole: as one website is cited and
penalized, another will appear in its place (and it may
even be the same website under a new domain name).
See Internet Society, Internet Society—Perspectives on
Internet Content Blocking: An Overview 19 (Mar.
2017).
3. The law will leave children free to
access unregulated offshore
pornographic websites.
Texas will not be able to reach a large portion of
websites that contain one-third “harmful” material
because many websites hosting such material are not
based in the United States and can simply thumb
their noses at laws like H.B. 1181. Ben Woods, The
(almost) invisible men and women behind the world’s
largest porn sites, The Next Web: Insider (Mar. 3,
2016), https://tinyurl.com/5fvjkuu7. This pattern has
already played out in other states that have enacted
14
similar age-verification statutes. Meghan McIntyre,
Many pornography websites aren’t complying with
new Va. age verification law, Virginia Mercury (Aug.
23, 2023), https://tinyurl.com/3nc6n6mm. In fact,
websites may be incentivized to move abroad or host
their content abroad—in the process escaping not just
H.B. 1181 but also U.S. regulations. The prevalence
of overseas websites also creates a jurisdictional hurdle to enforcement, which H.B. 1181 does nothing to
clear.
B. H.B. 1181 Will Have Unintended and
Dangerous Consequences for Children.
Perversely, although H.B. 1181 may fail to reach
most “harmful” websites, it will impact the most commonly used adult websites—and thereby ultimately
harm children. By prohibiting minors from accessing
regulated and well-known sexual-content websites,
Texas’s law incentivizes minors to seek out unregulated websites that pose even greater risks to their
wellbeing. See Majid Yar, Protecting children from Internet pornography? A critical assessment of statutory
age verification and its enforcement in the UK, 43 Policing: An International Journal 183, 191–192 (2019)
(explaining that age verification “may well simply encourage greater numbers of consumers to access instead pirated pornographic content via other, unregulated, channels”). Such unregulated sites often do not
moderate their databases to remove non-consensual
intimate imagery (“revenge porn”), child sexual abuse
material, or material that is illegal to possess. See,
e.g., Kari Paul, Pornhub removes millions of videos after investigation finds child abuse content, Guardian
(Dec. 14, 2020), https://tinyurl.com/3epfz6bz. Unregulated sites could also expose minors to a wider range
of harmful and illegal content, including sexual solicitation, online drug trafficking, and terrorist propaganda. See Pietro Ferrara et al., The Dark Side of the
15
Web—A Risk for Children and Adolescents Challenged
by Isolation during the Novel Coronavirus 2019 Pandemic, 228 J. Pediatrics 324, 325 (2021).
H.B. 1181 would do nothing to stop minors from
accessing these dark corners of the internet. In fact,
the same technology that would enable minors to bypass age verification altogether would lead them to
such dangerous content. By using the Tor network or
other open-source, anonymity-preserving browsers,
for example, minors would gain access to the dark
web—a part of the internet “which predominantly
host[s] unethical and criminal activities.” Ferrara at
324–325 (“Although not all content in the dark web is
illegal, more than 60% of the sites on the dark web
host illicit material.”). Children drawn to such sites
in their efforts to circumvent age verification would
face myriad risks, including “online grooming for various purposes, introduction to suicide, and child pornography.” Id. at 325; see also Pandora Blake, Age
verification for online porn: more harm than good?, 6
Porn Studies 228, 229 (“Age verification will not only
be ineffective, it will also put young people at greater
risk (for instance, of encountering illegal child abuse
images) if they use the dark web to get around age
checks.”). Additionally, “[c]hildren and adolescents in
particular may be unprepared and easily fall victim to
hackers, give away personal information without intention, or slip into illegal activity.” Ferrara at 325.
Other governments have recognized these dangers. In assessing whether to implement its own ageverification requirements for websites with content
harmful to children, the government of the United
Kingdom noted that some children “may be pushed towards using Tor (dark web) and related systems to
avoid age verification where they could be exposed to
illegal and extreme material that they otherwise
would never have come into contact with.” Yar at 192
16
(cleaned up). See Neil Thurman & Fabian Obster, The
regulation of internet pornography: What a survey of
under 18s tells us about the necessity for and potential
efficacy of emerging legislative approaches, 13 Pol’y &
Internet 415, 415 (2021).
While protecting children from age-inappropriate
material is a legitimate government interest, the cure
must not be worse than the disease. But that is precisely the outcome that H.B. 1181 invites. “In effect,
the attempt at harm reduction may instead inadvertently became a source of harm proliferation.” Yar at
192. By excusing Texas from its burden of satisfying
strict scrutiny, the Fifth Circuit blessed a law that seriously undermines its own aims of child protection.
C. Strict Scrutiny Ensures That
Regulations Protect Minors’ First
Amendment Rights to Receive
Information.
Under H.B. 1181, where more than a third of a
website’s content comprises “sexual material harmful
to minors,” children are denied access to all content on
the website—including content that is, by definition,
not harmful to minors. H.B. 1181 instead could have
required websites to redact or sequester harmful content, but it does not. There is no basis in this Court’s
jurisprudence for such a sweeping restriction of children’s First Amendment right to access non-obscene
speech. H.B. 1181 (1) violates the First Amendment
rights of minors, and (2) undermines parents’ discretion regarding their children’s media consumption—
both harms that could have been prevented by correctly subjecting the law to strict scrutiny.
1. H.B. 1181 violates minors’ First Amendment
rights. The Constitution protects minors’ rights to receive information because “the right to receive ideas
is a necessary predicate to the recipient’s meaningful
17
exercise of his own rights of speech, press, and political freedom.” Bd. of Educ. v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853, 867
(1982) (plurality opinion); see also Ginsberg v. New
York, 390 U.S. 629, 637 (1968); Carey v. Population
Servs. Int’l, 431 U.S. 678, 692 n.14 (1977) (“minors are
entitled to constitutional protection for freedom of
speech”).
Admittedly, minors’ First Amendment
rights are not as expansive as those same rights for
adults. Ginsberg, 390 U.S. at 636; see also Brown v.
Entm’t Merchs. Ass’n, 564 U.S. 786, 794 (2011) (noting
that legislatures can “adjust the boundaries of an existing category of unprotected speech to ensure that a
definition designed for adults is not uncritically applied to children”). But minors still have a constitutionally protected right to non-“adult” speech, and
states may not simply ban minors’ exposure to a full
category of speech when only a subset of that category
can plausibly be deemed obscene for them. H.B.
1181’s overbreadth results in severe restrictions to
those constitutionally protected rights.
H.B. 1181 vaguely and arbitrarily imposes ageverification requirements on websites if more than
one-third of their content comprises “sexual material
harmful to minors,” without once defining how the
volume of a website’s content is measured. H.B. 1181,
Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Ann. § 129B.002. Children may not access websites that surpass this onethird threshold at all—even if the remainder of the
website’s content is not “sexual material harmful to
minors.” This “sexual material” could include mere
“descriptions” of “a person’s pubic hair, anus, or genitals or the nipple of the female breast.”
Id.
§ 129B.001(6)(b)(1). But “material dealing with sex in
a manner that advocates ideas . . . or that has literary
or scientific or artistic value or any other form of social
importance, may not be branded as obscenity and denied the constitutional protection.” Jacobellis, 378
18
U.S. at 191. As a result, even for minors, “[t]he portrayal of sex, e.g., in art, literature, and scientific
works, is not itself sufficient reason to deny material
the constitutional protection of freedom of speech and
press.” Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 484, 487
(1957).
Although Texas attaches boilerplate language that
the law applies only to content that, “taken as a whole,
lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific
value for minors,” H.B. 1181, Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem.
Code Ann. § 129B.001(7), that language raises more
questions than it answers. The law does not specify
who will determine whether content lacks such value,
or how Texas will measure how much of a website’s
content has literary, artistic, political, or scientific
value for minors, such that the website will be exempt
from regulation. It is far from clear how Texas regulators would go about performing either task.
It’s clearer what websites will do under the shadow
of government enforcement: self-censor and implement an overly restrictive age-verification system
that filters out children—even if the content on a website does provide educational value—to avoid the risk
that the government determines they lack redeeming
value. It’s unclear whether sex-education materials,
Fifty Shades of Grey, or Game of Thrones fall in the
“harmful” or “unharmful” category, and the ultimate
arbiter is the state. This problem is compounded for
interactive websites where users can post comments
or communicate directly with other users. Does a
user-generated post containing “harmful” content
count towards the one-third threshold? Does user-touser communication count towards the threshold?
Even moderately risk-conscious websites are likely to
implement an age-verification system reflexively, for
fear of getting in trouble with Texas regulators.
19
H.B. 1181 is not narrowly tailored because it regulates more than just the “sexual material harmful to
minors,” and instead also affects non-obscene content,
in three ways. First, minors may no longer be able to
view content that does have literary, artistic, political,
or scientific value. Minors could be foreclosed from
non-obscene material, including sex-education materials, or art that the government may find objectionable or disagreeable. For example, Idaho’s House Bill
710 defines “harmful” materials to minors in a manner similar to H.B. 1181, and requires libraries to separate “harmful” materials and prevent minors from
accessing those materials, with a financial penalty on
those libraries that fail to do so. H.B. 710, Idaho Code
18-1514. Because of the difficulty of complying with
the law, some libraries have closed their doors to children. Idaho public library announces it will become
adults-only library, cites Idaho Legislature’s library
bill, Idaho Press (Sept. 2, 2024), https://tinyurl.com/f2x58j5k.
Second, websites that contain some harmful material but also contain material suitable for children
could become off-limits for minors. For example, Reddit, a large social media platform, has safe-for-work
content like informational posts and memes, but also
has not-safe-for-work content. Kyle Vanhemert, Fascinating Graphs Show How Reddit Got Huge by Going
Mainstream, WIRED (Jan. 9, 2014), https://tinyurl.com/4rpdz8ve (noting the diversity of not-safefor-work posts and more substantive, safe-for-work
posts on Reddit).
Third, if the “one-third” threshold includes usergenerated content, a website that was once accessible
by minors may, over time, become subject to H.B.
1181. Ibid. (noting the gradual change in the amount
of explicit material on Reddit, over time). Taken to-
20
gether, H.B. 1181 threatens to greatly limit the universe of non-harmful content that minors can see
online.
2. Strict scrutiny ensures that the state respects
“parental authority” and provides “parents the information needed to engage active supervision” of their
children. Playboy, 529 U.S. at 826. “Constitutional
interpretation has consistently recognized that the
parents’ claim to authority in their own household to
direct the rearing of their children is basic in the
structure of our society.” Ginsberg, 390 U.S. at 639–
640.
While this Court is aware of the effect that “indecent” content has on children, where identifying “indecent” material is subjective, and such material can
often be wrongly categorized as indecent when it does
contain “artistic or educational value,” the Court has
expressed a preference for laws that “provide[] tolerance for parental choice” and “facilitate[] parental
control of material coming into their homes.” Reno,
521 U.S. at 879; see also Ashcroft, 542 U.S. at 670 (emphasizing device-level age verification because it
would “give parents [the] ability [to monitor what
their children see]”); Brown, 564 U.S. at 804 (emphasizing that the law must not prescribe what “parents
ought to want,” but instead must assume that parents
can choose what speech their children consume). And
where there is “parental consent,” the government has
little “interest in substituting itself for informed and
empowered parents.” Playboy, 529 U.S. at 811, 814,
825.
Given the difficulty and subjectivity of the exercise, parents should be determining whether material
is “sexual material harmful to children” or instead
provides children with literary, artistic, scientific, ed-
21
ucational, or political value. A law that provides parents with tools to adjust what their children consume
based on their own parental discretion and their
rights, as parents, to “direct the rearing of their children,” is more likely to survive strict scrutiny and preserve parental rights. Ginsberg, 390 U.S. at 639–640.
Such tools also allow parents to make judgments that
the state is ill-equipped to make, such as what material is harmful to their children, whether their children should be able to view appropriate content on
websites that also contain “harmful” content, and
when and whether a website contains too much
“harmful” content to be suitable for their children as
a whole.
III. Device-Level Age Verification Would Be
More Effective and Safeguard Protected
Speech.
Content filtering is a well-established, effective
alternative to H.B. 1181 that avoids needless restrictions on adults’ and minors’ access to speech and
also respects parental rights to determine what information their children receive. Where strict scrutiny
applies (as it should here to the content-based H.B.
1181, see supra Section I), content filtering is the
“modern version of ‘blocking and filtering software’”
that this Court has endorsed as constitutionally compliant. Colmenero, 689 F. Supp. 3d at 401 (citing Ashcroft, 542 U.S. at 666–673). Indeed, content filtering
is this Court’s preferred method of protecting children
from adult content. See Playboy, 529 U.S. at 815 (noting that systems that “block unwanted channels on a
household-by-household basis” would likely survive
strict scrutiny). Content filtering does exactly that: it
blocks adult content or other content chosen by parents or administrators, on a device-by-device basis.
This Court also has acknowledged the effectiveness of
content filtering, observing that “a filter can prevent
22
minors from seeing all pornography, not just pornography posted to the Web from America. [Websitebased age verification] does not prevent minors from
having access to foreign harmful material.” Ashcroft,
542 U.S. at 666–667.
A. At Least Two Forms of Content
Filtering Would Be More Effective than
Website- Based Age Verification.
Two methods of implementing content filtering are
technologically feasible, preferred by the industry and
child advocates alike, and likely would survive strict
scrutiny: (1) parental controls available in software,
and (2) device-level age verification.
Parental Controls: Parental controls are settings
that administrative-level users, like parents, can use
to set limits on what users can view, access, and use.
See Parental Controls, FTC Consumer Advice (Sept.
2011), https://tinyurl.com/2nsemz5c. These tools also
can be used by administrators to monitor what sites
are accessed and block outgoing content (such as explicit images). Ibid. For example, parents could filter
any searches for adult content made by their children’s computer- or internet-access accounts.
In addition to the noted effectiveness of content filtering, parental-control systems “support parental authority” and “provide parents the information needed
to engage in active supervision”—goals this Court has
endorsed. Playboy, 529 U.S. at 815, 826. Parental
controls empower parents with default protections, allowing them to establish robust oversight because protections can be bypassed only by the parent. In the
district court’s words, device-level age verification
(such as through content filtering) “allows parents to
determine the level of access that their children
should have, and it encourages those parents to have
23
discussions with their children regarding safe online
browsing.” Colmenero, 689 F. Supp. 3d at 403.
Importantly, content filtering gives parents discretion to decide what their children should be able to
view, and thus respects parental authority. Reno, 521
U.S. at 879; Playboy, 529 U.S. at 815; Ginsberg, 390
U.S. at 639–640. Accordingly, this Court has held
that “filtering software” (a type of device-level age verification) was a reasonable alternative to more sweeping age-verification measures in part because devicelevel age verification would “give parents [the] ability
[to monitor what their children see] without subjecting protected speech to severe penalties.” Ashcroft,
542 U.S. at 670. Giving parents agency to decide what
content is inappropriate for their children is better
than relying on the overbroad, ambiguous definitions
of “harmful” content codified in H.B. 1181. See, e.g.,
Brown, 564 U.S. at 804 (noting the importance of parents in deciding what media their children consume).
Operating Systems that Filter Content Based on
Age: The government also could require that device
manufacturers institute default settings on devices
sold to children to prevent access to explicit content.
Under this mechanism, when users first activate their
devices, they must provide verifiable proof of age. For
example, users could be required to provide their age
to sign up for an Apple ID, which governs the permissions of an iPhone. If the user is an adult, content
filtering can be turned off, and the user can browse
the web freely. If the users are children, however,
their devices will filter out content based on preset indicia of explicit or dangerous material. The advantage
of this form of content filtering is that it works across
all websites and applications on the device and can
prevent even the recording or transmittal of harmful
content on a child’s device. An ancillary benefit is that
24
personal information is stored locally: platforms are
not given dates of birth or ID numbers.
B. Content Filtering Provides Significant
Advantages That Protect Children.
Content filtering has at least five advantages in
protecting children while retaining adults’ ability to
freely access content protected by the First Amendment.
First, content filtering at the device level is the preferred approach for civil-liberties groups and for the
adult entertainment industry. For example, privacyrights groups like the ACLU recognize that “the installation of filtering software on minors’ devices” is a
better alternative to website-based age verification.
See Press Release, ACLU, Free Speech Coalition and
Partners Urge Supreme Court to Strike Down Unconstitutional Texas Law Burdening Adult Access to Sexual Content, ACLU (Apr. 12, 2024), https://tinyurl.com/3mn4aadk. Similarly, leaders in the adultfilm industry endorse age- verification methods that
“identify users at the source: by their device, or account on the device, and allow access to age-restricted
materials and websites based on that identification.”
See Age Verification in the News, PornHub Blog (Mar.
14, 2024), https://tinyurl.com/y4pcuju8. This is because content filtering provides a standardized approach to age verification across multiple platforms
and services, especially when content restrictions are
consistent across sites. Content filtering creates a
unified, efficient system that cannot be replicated by
mandating age verification at the platform level
alone, as H.B. 1811 does.
Second, content filtering is more effective at
shielding children from explicit content than websitebased age verification because it is harder to circum-
25
vent. Content filtering can be integrated into the operating system via device-level age verification, ensuring that content is filtered across various websites and
online services. Filters work across all websites and
applications on the device and can further prevent recording or transmitting harmful content on a child’s
device. In the ordinary course, users cannot circumvent these restrictions through the use of fake IDs or
other deceptive practices. Website-based age verification, by contrast, can be evaded by using VPNs, the
Tor network, or websites hosted abroad. Content filtering can filter also by specific content, rather than
making off-limits whole websites that contain not just
adult content but also innocuous, age-appropriate content that a child may reasonably wish to access.
Third, content filtering minimizes the sharing of
personal information with websites, which prevents
websites from identifying who their users are and
from sharing and monetizing that information. This
personal information includes the identities of children who may attempt to access such websites using
their IDs. Nor can third parties access that information because it is located only on the device. Thus,
malicious actors, like hackers and identity thieves,
will have no user information to target. Identity
theft—especially of children’s identities—is a serious
problem affecting millions of children every year and
causing serious financial and emotional harm. 1.7
Million U.S. Children Fell Victim to Data Breaches,
According to Javelin’s 2022 Child Identity Fraud
Study,
Javelin
(Oct.
26,
2022),
https://tinyurl.com/3y83xjyj.
Fourth, website-based verification necessarily requires would-be users’ personal information (including that of minors) to be shared with third parties.
H.B. 1181 provides no guidance on what adult web-
26
sites need to do to adequately perform age verification. But to check the validity of an ID—for example,
to prevent minors from using fake IDs—each website
will have to cross-check a user’s ID information with
a government or third-party database.2 That creates
the possibility that the government can track children’s online behavior. Further, while H.B. 1181 requires that adult websites may not “retain any identifying information” of a user, it imposes no such restriction on internet service providers or the thirdparty database being used as a cross-reference; nor
does it define what “retention” or the duration of retention is. H.B. 1181. And as the district court already noted, the law’s requirements to delete data do
not apply “for the data in transmission”—so “any intermediary between the commercial websites and the
third-party verifiers will not be required to delete the
identifying data.” Colmenero, 689 F. Supp. 3d at 400
(emphasis added).
Fifth, website-based identification systems create
the risk of dangerous actors accessing the personal information of would-be users, including minors. There
is no guarantee that third-party trackers, such as advertising modules—which frequently track a user’s
preferences and personal information—will not gain
access to identification information that is entered on
a website. Worse, H.B. 1181 does not provide encryption or other security standards for websites that are
implementing age-verification requirements, thereby
increasing the chances that those attempting to access
these websites—children and adults alike—could
2
Alternatively, if such websites do not implement robust ID verification systems, users, including minors, will have the incentive to acquire fake IDs, which can be a gateway to other illicit
behavior. Failure to ensure that such websites are implementing
effective ID-verification systems would add to H.B. 1181’s lack of
effectiveness at achieving its aims of protecting children.
27
have their personal information end up in the hands
of hackers, identity thieves, or other wrongdoers.
Content filtering removes these significant privacy
barriers, ensuring that identification information remains secure and local, and is not used to violate the
privacy of minors sharing their personal information
with websites.
C. Other Jurisdictions Already Have
Crafted Legislation That Is More
Narrowly Tailored and More Effective.
Other states—with the same interest in protecting
minors from harmful content—are considering or
have already enacted laws to protect minors effectively without impermissibly infringing on the First
Amendment.
For example, Utah recently passed into law the
“Children’s Device Protection Act.” S.B. 104, 2024
Gen. Sess. (Utah 2024). That legislation similarly advances the goal of protecting minors from content
harmful to them through more effective and narrowly
tailored methods. S.B. 104 requires that all tablet and
smartphone devices sold in Utah include a filter that
blocks content harmful to children. The filter can be
removed upon activation if the user of the device is not
a minor, and the parents and guardians of minors
have the ability to deactivate the filter on a device
through a password. This type of content filtering provides maximum protection for minors alongside maximum agency for parents.
Similarly, California recently debated enacting
legislation like H.B. 1181. That legislation—the “Parent’s Accountability and Child Protection Act” (A.B.
3080)—has the same important goal as H.B. 1181;
namely, protecting minors against exposure to content that is harmful to them. But the California approach has an important distinction from H.B. 1181:
28
A.B. 3080 requires age-verification either through parental control software, or through device-level ageverification. A.B. 3080, 2023–2024 Assemb., Reg.
Sess. (Cal. 2024). Although A.B. 3080 has not been
enacted, it is nevertheless an example of how Texas
could have drafted its legislation to be more narrowly
tailored and more effective.
By misstating First Amendment law, the Fifth Circuit failed to require Texas to demonstrate that the
methods chosen in H.B. 1181 are the least restrictive
means of achieving the goal of protecting minors from
explicit or obscene internet content. They are not.
Content filtering is a plausible, more effective, more
secure, and less burdensome alternative than website-level age verification.
CONCLUSION
This Court should reverse the Fifth Circuit’s decision.
Respectfully submitted,
JILLIAN LONDON
DANIEL R. ADLER
ZACHARY MONTGOMERY
GIBSON, DUNN & CRUTCHER LLP
333 S. Grand Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90017
KYLIE CALABRESE
GIBSON, DUNN & CRUTCHER LLP
811 Main St., Ste. 3000
Houston, TX 77002
AMER S. AHMED
Counsel of Record
IASON TOGIAS
APRATIM VIDYARTHI
GIBSON, DUNN & CRUTCHER LLP
200 Park Ave.
New York, NY 10166
(212) 351 2427
AAhmed@gibsondunn.com
Counsel for Amicus Curiae
September 23, 2024
This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.