Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

> In fact, under the laws that the Supreme Court just upheld, prosecutors in Tennessee and South Dakota can even reach across state lines and prosecute writers on FELONY charges for a single paragraph of sexually-explicit writing on my site that they think "harmed" kids in their states, facing up to FIFTEEN years in prison, for failing to implement ID-checks on my dinky little free WordPress site.

> It's unlikely these interstate prosecutions would happen...

It might wind up being uncommon, but definitely not unlikely - it's basically assured that it will happen eventually, especially if the judge finds the text in question particularly or personally offensive.

I guess now is a great time to start a KYC company.

Or now is a good time to build privacy tools into everything.

Unfortunately, this is the law we're talking about. Privacy tools don't do much to mitigate the hardships of life as a fugitive.

Judges are not the people that prosecute crimes

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True, but it's a given that prosecutors will do it since that's their job.

If an state AG tries to prosecute an entity that has no ties to the state other than content being passively accessible, that's probably another supreme court case if it doesn't get immediately decided in favor of the defendant in the lower courts. You open a big can of worms if entities are required to proactively comply with regulations in states they have zero presence in.

If Texas wants to block content from entities that have nothing to do with Texas, they can build their own great firewall.

Isn't this covered by the "full faith and credit" clause? [0]

[0] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIV-S1-1/AL...

Technically anything is possible with the Calvinball Supreme Court, but states can choose not to extradite their citizens. E.g. NY has a shield law for abortion doctors.

https://ag.ny.gov/resources/organizations/police-departments...

> You open a big can of worms if entities are required to proactively comply with regulations in states they have zero presence in.

It’s true, it would cause a great deal of chaos if suddenly every person and business had to comply with fifty-plus different and sometimes contradictory state laws.

But it seems like that’s where we’re headed?

As far as I understand it (IANAL), this ruling decides that the speech restrictions imposed by the Texas ID verification law are compliant with the 1st amendment. It didn't touch on whether or not Texas can enforce its laws on entities that don't do business in Texas.

IANAL, but it seems like things are already moving in this direction. For example, FL has a similar state law regarding pornography, and the response from many porn sites has been to comply or block FL IPs rather than fight it up to the supreme court. I guess someone will do it eventually, but I suspect there is an assumption that they'd be wasting their time and money to do so.

This feels helpful, but puts a big burden on the person targeted. I live in California; let's say I run afoul of this Tennessee law and am criminally prosecuted.

California decides this is bullshit and won't extradite me to Tennessee. Great. The article mentions that 20-odd states are implementing similar laws (though most offer only civil penalties, not criminal). Let's say I want to visit friends in New York. I get on a plane, and the plane flies over one of those other states with shitty laws. They've decided to help Tennessee with their shitty-law enforcement, see that my name is on a passenger list of a flight crossing that state's airspace, and they require my plane divert to a local airport so they can arrest me.

Ok, maybe states can't do that? But I still have to be careful how I fly; I have to only take direct flights, or be very careful as to which connecting airports I allow in my itineraries. I have to hope that all my flights go smoothly, and that my flights never have issues that require them to divert to an airport in a state with shitty laws.

This still sucks for people who don't have to live in states with these garbage laws.

Yeah I don't think a business is going to try to force the issue when a geoblock is simple to implement. If it happens, it's probably going to be some kind of advocacy group pushing it.

> especially if the judge finds the text in question particularly or personally offensive.

Pro-censorship advocates will venue shop to find a sympathetic court

We've banned this account.

This is presently happening in China with homosexual literature: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c056nle2drno

Rural police departments decide that a piece of text 'harmed' one of their residents and prosecute the author.

There are constitutional limits on when state courts can exercise jurisdiction over people not physically located in the state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_jurisdiction_in_Inter...

> Personal jurisdiction in American civil procedure law is premised on the notion that a defendant should not be subject to the decisions of a foreign or out of state court, without having "purposely availed" himself of the benefits that the forum state has to offer.

> Courts have held that the greater the commercial nature and level of interactivity associated with the website, the more likely it is that the website operator has "purposefully avail[ed] itself" of the forum state's jurisdiction. [..] In contrast, a passive website that simply makes the information available to the user will be less likely to have a basis for personal jurisdiction.

(By the same principle, even an interactive website can probably avoid jurisdiction if they block IP addresses from the state, and don't encourage people to evade the block or anything like that.)

It's going to get used against trans and queer people. Someone will try to claim that a trans person in normal street clothes is "corrupting children", or that merely mentions of their existence is.

First they will find targets, then decide on the crime, then shop the venue.

That would be one wild case if it did happen. Sucks for whoever it happens to, but that would 100% turn into a high profile case that puts the 10th amendment into question.

To be honest, it would be settled relatively quickly because I don't think any state wants to be the one to set such precedent as of now.

Until someone files suit on the commonly known ineffectiveness of geolocating IPs to try to force ID checks instead.

This is already happening to queer people who dress in drag.