1. United States
2. Letter

I respectfully ask that you overturn the Fifth Circuit's ruling regarding Texas' age verification law. Strict scrutiny, when properly applied to laws like these, doesn't weaken the effectiveness of them, but serves as an incentive to create better age verification laws that won't be challenged in courts or repealed and makes them less invasive or censorious. The Fifth Circuit erred in its ruling regarding Texas, and age verification online is a lot more pernicious and dangerous than simply being asked for ID at checkout in a liquor store. No one is arguing for exposing kids to inappropriate materials online. We are simply arguing for less invasive more secure options, which are readily available and even pre-installed in all electronic devices. There are a substantial amount of steps for parents to take in order to optimize the safety of their child's online experience, But it is far better than a top down age verification scheme from the government. Many states have already been skirting the Miller test when writing their laws, all the while claiming that it's regulation. I argue that regulation that requires you to constantly display sensitive information on the Internet is far more dangerous than what might be shown on the Internet. These laws also skirt anti-obscenity guidelines Which were made to prevent this kind of abuse from happening in the first place. Governments shouldn't skip past strict scrutiny just because they believe children are in danger of seeing something they shouldn't. Laws like these remove responsibility from parents and shift it to the states, who may not have the best interests of children in mind or the interests of adults. For example, child marriages are still legal in a majority of the United States, which should trouble any parent who cares about the welfare and safety of their children. In my state, a church was discovered to have actively been grooming and marrying off minors without their express consent. And yet this child endangering practice of forcing kids to marry adults who are far older than they are or at all is willingly overlooked in favor of prosecuting pornography and fiction. A lawmaker in the who supports the age verification law in their state had their photos shared on an unregulated rogue pirate website that is not beholden to US law. The law failed to protect them from exploitation and similar laws like SESTA and FOSTA have also failed to stop the trafficking and exploitation of victims. People have also had their identity stolen and their accounts hacked as a result of using age verification programs that they are forced to use in order to access adult material. To rule out strict scrutiny in favor of rational basis while all this is happening would be miscarriage of justice. Please rule in favor of strict scrutiny being applied to Texas' age verification law and laws like it.