Texans in search of online adult content found disappointment Thursday after the website Pornhub suspended services in their state over objections to an age verification law that the site claims stifles First Amendment rights.

Pornhub, one of the most popular websites in the world, blocked Texas-based access to its site one week after the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld the age verification portion of the state law. The adult video site previously opposed such measures in Utah and other states, arguing that “age gating” laws are ineffective, unfair and punish the very users states want to protect.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) called the decision a “victory” over porn companies and denied the state’s law violates free speech laws. But free expression advocates, including those in the adult content industry, warn that laws like the one in Texas are being weaponized to censor a variety of content, including reproductive rights resources and queer literature.

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Here’s what to know:

What is Texas’s new age verification law?

In June, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed into law H.B. 1181, a bipartisan bill requiring companies that offer “sexual material harmful to minors” to verify that its users are at least 18 years old.

Companies that need to limit minors’ access, such as websites for liquor brands, commonly use age-gating methods such as requiring a user to list their birthday. Texas’s law required users to prove their age by either entering information from a government-issued ID or using a third-party system that uses public and private data — such as employment, education or mortgage information — to verify age.

H.B. 1181 also required porn sites to display a controversial “health warning,” which the law’s opponents called “pseudoscientific.” It included language like: “TEXAS HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES WARNING: Pornography increases the demand for prostitution, child exploitation, and child pornography.”

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While the 5th Circuit upheld the age verification portion of the law, it struck down the health warning requirement, ruling that it “unconstitutionally compelled plaintiffs’ speech.”

Why is Pornhub blocking access?

Pornhub’s parent company, which was called MindGeek before rebranding last year to Aylo, was among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that ended up before the 5th Circuit.

Pornhub responded to the court’s ruling by pulling access to its site and its subsidiaries, including popular hubs Brazzers and YouPorn, in Texas to protest the law, which an Aylo executive called “ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous.”

Alex Kekesi, Aylo’s vice president of brand and community, said in a statement Thursday that the age verification requirement was overbroad and would do little to protect children.

“Not only will it not actually protect children, it will inevitably reduce content creators’ ability to post and distribute legal adult content and directly impact their ability to share the artistic messages they want to convey with it,” Kekesi said.

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Kekesi added that the law “fails strict scrutiny by employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas’s stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors.”

Pornhub has said age verification laws without adequate enforcement will let pornography websites choose whether to comply, potentially driving users to sites that already have fewer content safeguards than Pornhub properties.

Which states have similar age verification laws?

At least eight states have some form of age verification laws to limit children’s access to content deemed “harmful to minors.”

States with conservative legislatures have pursued age verification laws for adult websites as part of a broader anti-porn agenda. Since 2016, at least 17 states, starting with Utah, have declared pornography a public health crisis.

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In the portion of the Texas law that was struck down by the 5th Circuit, the state had sought to force porn sites to include warning language with such unproven claims as “Pornography is potentially biologically addictive, is proven to harm human brain development, desensitizes brain reward circuits, increases conditioned responses, and weakens brain function.”

A 2019 paper in the American Journal of Public Health cautioned that claims calling pornography a public health crisis are unproven and may be counterproductive.

“The movement to declare pornography a public health crisis is rooted in an ideology that is antithetical to many core values of public health promotion and is a political stunt, not reflective of best available evidence,” the authors wrote.

A spokesperson for Pornhub confirmed Thursday that it has blocked access over age verification laws in Virginia, Montana, North Carolina, Arkansas, Utah, Mississippi and now Texas.

What does the law say?

Efforts to regulate adult content online stretch back nearly 30 years, to the early days of the internet.

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In its majority opinion, justices on the 5th Circuit cited a 1968 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld a New York law banning the sale of “obscene” magazines to anyone under 17. In the case, Ginsberg v. New York, the high court upheld a state’s right to deny children access to content that was “harmful to minors.”

Supreme Court rulings beginning in the late 1990s, when internet use was becoming widespread, found that laws meant to protect children cannot be so broad that they restrict the rights of adults. That concern is what prompted the court in 1997 to strike down a portion of the Communications Decency Act.

“It is true that we have repeatedly recognized the governmental interest in protecting children from harmful materials,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote. “But that interest does not justify an unnecessarily broad suppression of speech addressed to adults.”

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Pornhub and others adult sites said that they do not oppose restricting their content from minors but that the age requirements present a barrier for adults and force adults trying to access constitutionally protected material to hand over private data that could be stored or tracked by the state. The company has argued that restrictive measures at the point of content, such as browser extensions or device filters that parents can install, are more effective.

Pornhub said it plans to appeal the ruling.

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