United States | Minor matter

Should you have to prove your age before watching porn?

America’s Supreme Court weighs a Texan law aimed at protecting kids

A laptop screen with a red curtain obscuring a hand on a body
Illustration: Getty Images/The Economist
|WASHINGTON, DC

THOMAS JEFFERSON’S library was filled with books depicting “vivid scenes of sexuality, lust and sexual scandal”. So wrote the plaintiffs in the lead-up to Free Speech Coalition v Paxton, a case about online pornography heard by America’s Supreme Court on January 15th. The Free Speech Coalition, an adult-entertainment trade group, was keen to remind the justices that some founding fathers were anything but prudish. (Benjamin Franklin, it seems, also had a stash.)

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