The Supreme Court’s Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton Decision Is a Privacy Nightmare for LGBTQ+ People

CJ Larkin
Jun 27
5 min read

A Dangerous New Chapter in LGBTQ+ Digital Rights

Today’s ruling by the Supreme Court in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton delivers yet another blow to the fractured landscape of LGBTQ+ rights in the United States, through the familiar guise of “protecting children.” In a sharp deviation from their own previous decisions, such as Ashcroft vs. ACLU (Court strikes down mandatory age verification laws as unconstitutional), this decision opens the door for Texas and like-minded states to require users to submit government-issued ID to access platforms that contain vaguely defined “sexually harmful content.” As a result, your ability to access digital platforms and social media could hinge on how politicians choose to interpret a subjective definition, and your willingness to surrender your personal privacy. In an already-uncertain landscape for digital rights, this opens the door for even more targeted attacks against the LGBTQ+ community and the content its members rely on.

Overview of Paxton

Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton challenged Texas House Bill 1181, which requires age verification on any commercial site, including websites and platforms, where more than one-third of the content is “sexually harmful to minors.” Plaintiffs argued that the law “impermissibly burdens users and that the health warnings impermissibly compel speech,” resulting in a district court issuing a preliminary injunction against the bill. The Fifth Circuit vacated the injunction and today, the Supreme Court ruled to uphold H.B. 1181, citing that “no person — adult or child — has a First Amendment right to access speech that is obscene to minors without first submitting proof of age." Essentially, the Court held that H.B. 1181 does not burden substantially more speech than necessary to achieve its interest in protecting youth online, and that any burden on adults’ free speech is merely “incidental,” and therefore insufficient to bar the use of age verification measures.

“Pornography” as a Pretext for Queer Erasure

Texas House Bill 1181 leans on undefined and highly subjective terms like “pornography” and “sexually harmful content.” In a political climate where mere LGBTQ+ existence is routinely labeled as obscene, these terms are a Trojan horse and a dog whistle for censorship – and the Court’s decision does not address or mitigate these harms. The consequences of applying and affirming these ill-defined terms aren’t theoretical – state and municipal governments across the United States have already been inundated with legislation using these or similar terms restricting and banning books depicting queer characters, all under the guise of protecting children from “sexually harmful content.” According to the ACLU, a Texas county pulled 17 books from their library system after community groups argued they were “pornographic filth” – many of which simply because they included representations of LGBTQ+ people. An Iowa state law has prohibited public schools from carrying books that contain descriptions of “sex acts,” resulting in books depicting LGBTQ+ people, such as Pete Buttigieg, being pulled from the shelves. If innocuous picture books about queer people simply existing are being pulled from shelves in the name of protecting kids from “pornography,” there’s no doubt this ruling can, and will, be weaponized to conflate queer existence with sexually harmful content.

Supporters of this ruling insist this decision is limited to explicitly pornographic material and websites, but the broad requirements imposed by H.B. 1181, that age verification applies to platforms with more than a third of their content deemed “harmful for minors,” opens the door for application to most, if not all, social media platforms. This could lead to a dangerous “chilling effect” around LGBTQ+ content on social media platforms – if platforms are uncertain whether LGBTQ+ content is going to lead to legal repercussions, or to platforms being classified as “pornographic” websites, they may preemptively censor it out of an overabundance of caution, whether or not a suit is filed against them. In a system that’s all too eager to equate queer existence with obscenity and harm, it belies belief that the restrictions that will come from this ruling will stop at pornography websites but will also be used as a tool to age-gate and erase the ways the LGBTQ+ community uses platforms for care, support, and resistance.

Age Verification as a Barrier to Speech and Community

Additionally, requiring users to upload government-issued IDs, especially without clear privacy or security standards, is a ticking time bomb for all users, but especially for the LGBTQ+ community. The opinion concludes that both online platforms and third-party identity verifications have “every incentive to assure users of their privacy” – however, with minimal guardrails or restrictions in place within H.B. 1181, it’s unclear what those incentives actually are. As the law stands, there are no defined standards platforms must use when creating or instituting age verification protocols. Companies can turn to third parties with little to no oversight or liability, and without any implicit or explicit privacy protections for their users. These measures have already proven too risky – as reported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation last year, a “major identity verification company, AU10TIX, left login credentials exposed online for more than a year, allowing access to this very sensitive user data.” Now, imagine the damage if that breach included data related to queer youth, transgender users, or anyone searching for sensitive healthcare or other resources. Outing someone isn’t a hypothetical here, and the ramifications for this sort of data exposure are potentially disastrous.

Implications on Queer Rights, On and Offline

By creating avenues and incentives for the widespread age-gating of commercial entities, including social media platforms, this ruling jeopardizes not just the liberties, but the lives of LGBTQ+ users. For our community, these platforms are so much more than entertainment – they provide essential information, care, and community, especially for youth. As found in our 2025 polling report, a significant majority of LGBTQ+ users join social media platforms before the age of 18, citing reasons such as the ability to express themselves more openly than they can offline (70%), escaping from or coping with negative offline environments (69%), and accessing LGBTQ+ specific health, safety, or legal resources (60%) as key reasons for joining those platforms. This ruling risks slamming the door on youth seeking those lifelines. In an increasingly hostile offline world, Paxton will be remembered as yet another draconian blow to a community in urgent need of protection, not further isolation.

The Quiet Part, Out Loud

There’s no mistaking how this ruling will be weaponized against LGBTQ+ communities– if you don’t believe us, listen to the lawmakers behind the piece of legislation at its center. Texas Representative Matt Shaheen, who authored H.B. 1181, used the exact same language to define “sexual material harmful to minors” in this bill as he did in a separate measure demanding the prosecution of organizers of an all-ages drag performance in Dallas. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who signed H.B. 1181, deemed LGBTQ+ memoirs “pornography,” and demanded that they be removed from libraries. And Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the named defendant in this Supreme Court Case, has publicly pronounced that gender-affirming care is an “abuse under Texas law,” one he has a “duty” to punish. These officials have already signaled their intent to use this decision against LGBTQ+ individuals and communities. This ruling opens the door for other legislators with anti-LGBTQ+ agendas to join in on this attack against LGBTQ+ expression. It is not a matter of if, but when, we will see LGBTQ+ communities across the nation subjected to similar restrictions.

This ruling, like the Court’s Skremtti decision just a week before it, isn’t an outlier: it will enable widespread efforts to undermine our community, where the relentless targeting of LGBTQ+ bodies, voices, and futures isn’t a bug, but a design of the system.