Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito became the talk of the internet after asking about how PornHub compared to Playboy magazine during a court hearing on Wednesday.
His comments occurred as arguments were being heard about Texas H.B. 1181, which requires a “commercial entity” whose online content consists of more than one-third of “sexual material harmful to minors” to “use reasonable age verification methods.”
The Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for the adult entertainment industry, filed a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality shortly after the Texas legislature passed the law in June 2023.
Alito, 74, made his comments after asking Free Speech Coalition attorney Derek Shaffer what percentage of Pornhub content “is not obscene as to children.”
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After Shaffer said that he “would agree that most of it is,” Alito continued to question him.
“Is it like the old Playboy magazine? You have essays there by the modern-day equivalent of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, Junior?” he asked before Shaffer would respond, “Not in that sense.”
“But in the sense you have sexual wellness posts about women recovering from hysterectomies and how they can enjoy sex — that’s on there. Discussions of age-verification proposals and where the industry lines up as far as what they think should be legislated and what should not,” said Shaffer.
Texas H.B. 1181 was initially barred from going into effect by Senior U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra, but the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals later lifted Ezra’s order, per SCOTUS Blog.
The Supreme Court later rejected a request to reinstate Ezra’s order and block Texas from temporarily enforcing the law in April 2024. It agreed to take up the dispute in July and review the 5th Circuit’s decision.
Following Wednesday’s hearing, many people on X questioned the associate justice’s comments, with one social media user writing, “There is no way Samuel Alito read Playboy for the articles in his day.”
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“Setting aside the ridiculous insinuation being made by this line of questioning that suggests only certain calibers of speech should be free, are we seriously supposed to believe that Samuel Alito is not intimately familiar with the content available on PornHub dot com?” another user wrote.
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