Texas Age Verification Law: Covered Sites, Methods, and Penalties

The Texas age verification law, House Bill 1181, requires any commercial website where more than one-third of the content is sexual material harmful to minors to confirm every visitor is at least 18 before granting access. The statute took effect September 1, 2023, sits in Chapter 129B of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code, and was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2025.¹ Noncompliance can cost up to $10,000 per day, $250,000 if a minor gets through, and a lawsuit from the child’s parent.

Which Websites Have to Comply

The obligation attaches to any commercial entity that “knowingly and intentionally” publishes or distributes material on a website, including a social media platform, when more than one-third of that content qualifies as sexual material harmful to minors.² A site owner who genuinely does not know their content crosses the threshold has not “knowingly” triggered the law, but for major adult platforms, claiming ignorance of your own catalog is not a realistic defense.

Several categories of entities sit outside the statute. Bona fide news or public interest broadcast organizations are exempt, along with internet service providers, search engines, and cloud service providers for content they do not directly control.² Companies that merely transmit or index content created by others are not on the hook.

What Counts as Sexual Material Harmful to Minors

The statute uses a three-part test built on the Supreme Court’s obscenity framework but calibrated for minors. Content only qualifies if it meets all three prongs:²

An average person applying contemporary community standards would find that the material, taken as a whole, is designed to appeal to the prurient interest of minors.
It depicts or describes sexual conduct, nudity, or related acts in a way that is patently offensive with respect to minors.
Taken as a whole, it lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.

Material with genuine artistic or educational value, even if it contains nudity, falls outside the statute. The “community standards” language means enforcement could look different in different parts of Texas, though that tension has not been tested under HB 1181 specifically.

Approved Age Verification Methods

A covered site must use one of three approaches before letting a visitor through:²

A government-backed digital identification credential presented through the user’s device.
A government-issued identification such as a driver’s license or passport, submitted through a commercial age verification system.
A commercially reasonable method that relies on public or private transactional data (such as mortgage, education, or employment records) to confirm the user is 18 or older.

The No-Retention Rule

Neither the website nor any third-party vendor handling verification may keep any identifying information about the user after access has been granted.² Verify age, then delete everything that could identify the person. In practice, this pushes sites toward systems that return a simple yes-or-no age result rather than storing ID images on their own servers. Retaining data anyway is its own violation with its own penalty.

Required Health Warnings

Verification is not the only duty. Covered sites must display specific health warnings about pornography on their landing page and in every advertisement, in 14-point font or larger. The statute requires the site to state that pornography is “potentially biologically addictive,” is “proven to harm human brain development,” and “increases the demand for prostitution, child exploitation, and child pornography.”³

Every page of the site must also display contact information for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) helpline at 1-800-662-4357, described as a free, confidential service available 24 hours a day in English and Spanish.³ The warnings are attributed to “Texas Health and Human Services” and are mandated verbatim, so a covered site cannot paraphrase or soften the language.

Penalties for Noncompliance

The Texas Attorney General can bring an enforcement action in a Travis County district court or in the district court where the entity’s principal Texas place of business is located.⁴ Civil penalties come in three tiers:

Up to $10,000 for each day the site operates without complying with the verification requirements.
Up to $10,000 for each instance the website or its third-party vendor retains identifying information in violation of the privacy mandate.
Up to $250,000 if one or more minors accesses harmful sexual material because the entity failed to verify ages.

These stack. A site running 30 days without verification faces up to $300,000 in daily fines alone, before any separate penalty for minors who got through.⁴

The law also creates a private right of action. If a minor accesses harmful sexual material because a website failed to verify ages, the minor’s parent or guardian can sue the entity for damages, court costs, and reasonable attorney’s fees.² A noncompliant site faces pressure from both the state and from individual families.

Is the Law Actually Enforceable Now?

Yes. On June 27, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton that HB 1181 is constitutional. Justice Thomas, writing for the majority, held that requiring age verification “is within a State’s authority to prevent children from accessing sexually explicit content” and called the statute “a constitutionally permissible exercise of that authority.”¹

The Court applied intermediate scrutiny rather than the strict scrutiny the adult industry argued for, concluding that verification imposes only an “incidental burden” on adult speech because it adds a step before access rather than banning any content.¹ Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson dissented, arguing HB 1181 is a content-based restriction that should have received strict scrutiny.

One legal question the Supreme Court did not resolve: whether Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act preempts HB 1181 as applied to platforms hosting primarily user-generated content or based overseas. The district court had partially agreed with that theory, but the Supreme Court touched on Section 230 only in a historical footnote.¹ That issue could resurface in future enforcement actions.

What Sites Are Doing in Response

Rather than implement verification, several major adult platforms have blocked Texas users entirely. Pornhub cut off access in Texas along with more than 20 other states that enacted similar laws. Visitors from those states see a message explaining the decision instead of any content. Some users route around the block with VPNs, but that does not change a website’s legal obligations under HB 1181.

Texas was among the first states to pass this kind of law and is no longer alone. Roughly 25 states have enacted age verification requirements for sites hosting material harmful to minors as of 2025. With the constitutional challenge resolved, operators who serve Texas users and meet the one-third threshold have to either verify, block the state, or accept the penalties.

1
Supreme Court of the United States. Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton (23-1122)
2
Texas Legislature Online. Texas House Bill 1181 – Age Verification Law
3
Texas Legislature Online. Texas House Bill 1181 – Enrolled Version
4
Texas Legislature Online. Senate Research Center Analysis – HB 1181