[dragonwriter]

Mandatory age verification adds barriers to adult users and does not effectively prevent children from access, which is the reason that the Third Circuit, in a decision that the Supreme Court declined to hear a government appeal, struck it down as a First Amendment violation the last time the federal government tried it, after the Supreme Court had done so the prior time, and nothing substantial has changed about those facts, and the First Amendment is incorporated against the states by the Fourteenth, so there is no reason for a different result when Texas tries to do it now.