The War on Porn Regular Updates about the Assault on The Adult Industry
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There are court decisions that land with a dull thud, and then there are the ones that feel like a door has quietly been locked behind you. This week’s move from the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals sits firmly in the second category.
A three-judge panel just wiped away a lower court’s injunction that had been blocking Tennessee from enforcing its age verification law for adult sites. They didn’t do it with loud fanfare. They simply pointed to a recent Supreme Court decision and said, essentially, their hands are tied. And for anyone who works in digital adult spaces — creators, viewers, small platform operators — the shift is significant.
The law in question sits under the Protect Tennessee Minors Act (PTMA), which requires commercial adult platforms to verify the age of anyone trying to access sexual content. Tennessee lawmakers didn’t write this in a vacuum — they modeled it after Texas’ HB 1181, the same law that’s been bouncing through courts for over a year now. And with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Free Speech Coalition et al. v. Paxton, Tennessee suddenly found a legal green light where, a week earlier, there’d been a flashing red.
The Sixth Circuit judges put it plainly: “[The] Supreme Court has upheld a Texas statute that the Court described as ‘materially similar’ to the one at issue here.”
That line is the hinge. The before and after.
Once the highest court signed off on Texas’ law, Tennessee simply adjusted its own definitions to match. The panel noted that “the state has also since amended the PTMA, the Attorney General says, to track ‘the definitional language at issue in Paxton almost word for word.’”
Meaning: Tennessee rewrote its law to be legally bulletproof — or at least bullet-resistant — by mirroring the one that survived at the highest level.
And that’s where things get complicated, even surreal, depending on who you ask.
Earlier versions of the PTMA had been criticized for being vague, especially in how the state defined “obscenity” and “harmful to minors.” Those categories aren’t just slippery — they’re historically weaponized. What counts as obscene in Nashville might pass without a blink in New York, or Berlin, or literally any corner of the internet where adults talk to each other freely. Lawmakers in Tennessee tightened those definitions after the Supreme Court’s decision, lifting language almost directly from the Texas statute that the justices allowed to stand.
The result? A clearer legal blueprint — but one that still treats the adult internet like a gated amusement park, complete with bouncers and ID scanners.
The Sixth Circuit didn’t rule that age verification is harmless or good policy. They just said that, for now, the district court’s injunction can’t stand while appeals continue. In legal speak, the fight isn’t over. In reality, the pressure just shifted to the people who will have to comply immediately.
And that’s where the human story sits:
•The solo performer who runs her own website.
•The queer couple documenting intimacy as art.
•The niche platforms built by two founders and a rented server rack.
•The teenager who grew up online and suddenly hits a digital checkpoint that assumes danger instead of curiosity.
There’s a narrative underneath these rulings that rarely fits into the court filings:
This isn’t just about sex. It’s about who gets to speak, who gets to control, and who gets to define what is “harmful.”
Tennessee made its move quietly, in the wake of a louder battle in Texas. But the message travels. Other states are already watching, already drafting, already preparing to photocopy the language line by line.
Sometimes the law doesn’t roar.
Sometimes it whispers.
But the effect can be the same.
And the internet is listening.
