Justice Elena Kagan called Friday morning’s Supreme Court porn ruling “confused,” saying it flies in the face of established First Amendment case law.

In Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton, the Supreme Court upheld a Texas state law that requires adults to provide official identification in order to view websites where at least one-third of the content on it is “harmful to minors.” The case was decided 6-3 on ideological lines, with Justice Clarence Thomas writing the majority opinion, and Justice Kagan writing the dissent.

The Court found that the 2023 Texas law did not run afoul of the First Amendment, in part because the state has an interest in protecting minors from harmful material. That part of the ruling was widely agreed upon. Where the issue lies is whether the specific law was well-tailored enough to not infringe on protected speech.

READ MORE: Louisiana Adults Must Now Show Drivers’ Licenses to Access Porn Online

Kagan and the other liberal justices disagreed on this point. She argued that while the state clearly has the right to declare certain speech obscene for minors and legally prohibit them from engaging with it, adults must still be allowed access. Kagan said that Friday’s ruling runs counter to cases brought before the Court “on no fewer than four prior occasions,” where the Court has “given the same answer, consistent with general free speech principles, each and every time.”

Kagan argued that the concept of “strict scrutiny” should have been applied to the Texas law, which requires the “least restrictive means of achieving a compelling state interest.” The ruling however, said that the ID requirement only hit the level of “intermediate scrutiny,” which does not require the state to answer the “least restrictive means” question.

“The majority’s opinion concluding to the contrary is, to be frank, confused. The opinion, to start with, is at war with itself. Parts suggest that the First Amendment plays no role here—that because Texas’s law works through age verification mandates, the First Amendment is beside the point. But even the majority eventually gives up that ghost. As, really, it must,” Kagan wrote.

She argued that the law would cause some people not to access these objectionable-to-minors websites, saying that people may not want to “identify themselves to a website (and maybe, from there, to the world)” as someone who enjoys pornography. The reference to “the world” refers to concerns raised by the Free Speech Coalition that the Texas law could leave citizens open to hackers if sites do not properly protect the identification information.

“But still, the majority proposes, that burden demands only intermediate scrutiny because it arises from an ‘incidental’ restriction, given that Texas’s statute uses age verification to prevent minors from viewing the speech. Except that is wrong—nothing like what we have ever understood as an incidental restraint for First Amendment purposes. Texas’s law defines speech by content and tells people entitled to view that speech that they must incur a cost to do so. That is, under our First Amendment law, a direct (not incidental) regulation of speech based on its content—which demands strict scrutiny,” Kagan wrote.

After the law passed, some pundits warned that if it were upheld, it could lead to other laws against content deemed objectionable. The Free Speech Coalition argued that porn can be the “canary in the coal mine of free speech,” and Harvard Law Professor Rebecca Tushnet agreed.

“If the Court is open to revisiting the First Amendment framework that structured the last 70 years or so of constitutional history, then many things will be up for grabs, including defamation law, political speech regulations, and compelled speech. Speech about abortion and LGBTQ issues would be the obvious next targets,” she said.

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that the Supreme Court’s Friday morning ruling that courts cannot tell the federal government not to enforce an executive order is a slippery slope.

The court ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in Trump’s favor in Trump v. CASA, Inc.. The case hinged on whether or not lower courts had the ability to issue injunctions stopping the federal government from following executive orders. In this case, the executive order in question would end birthright citizenship—a right enshrined in the 14th Amendment since 1868—for children born to undocumented immigrants in the United States.

The 14th Amendment lays out the rules granting citizenship. Section 1 begins “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The Court ruled that lower courts cannot issue a “universal injunction” against an executive order. Rather, individuals must sue for relief under an injunction. The ruling gives an example of an individual pregnant person suing to ensure citizenship for their child. The Court says that if the executive order is stopped against that individual, their “complete relief” will not be “any more complete” if the order applies to everyone.

“When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too. The Government’s applications for partial stays of the preliminary injunctions are granted, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue,” the ruling read.

READ MORE: Over Two-Thirds of Voters In Favor of Birthright Citizenship as SCOTUS Set to Decide

In her dissent, Sotomayor called out the Trump administration for attempting to do an end-run around the Constitution and succeeding.

“It is now the President who attempts, in an Executive Order (Order or Citizenship Order), to repudiate birthright citizenship. Every court to evaluate the Order has deemed it patently unconstitutional and, for that reason, has enjoined the Federal Government from enforcing it,” she wrote.

“The Government does not ask for complete stays of the injunctions, as it ordinarily does before this Court. Why? The answer is obvious: To get such relief, the Government would have to show that the Order is likely constitutional, an impossible task in light of the Constitution’s text, history, this Court’s precedents, federal law, and Executive Branch practice. So the Government instead tries its hand at a different game. It asks this Court to hold that, no matter how illegal a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the Executive to stop enforcing it against anyone,” Sotomayor continued.

“The gamesmanship in this request is apparent and the Government makes no attempt to hide it. Yet, shamefully, this Court plays along.”

Sotomayor argues that the Trump v. CASA, Inc. ruling now opens the door for any rights in the Constitution to be stripped from Americans via executive order. She specifically says that the ruling could be used by a “different administration … to seize firearms from lawabiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship,” two frequent bugbears of the right.

“The majority holds that, absent cumbersome class-action litigation, courts cannot completely enjoin even such plainly unlawful policies unless doing so is necessary to afford the formal parties complete relief. That holding renders constitutional guarantees meaningful in name only for any individuals who are not parties to a lawsuit. Because I will not be complicit in so grave an attack on our system of law, I dissent,” Sotomayor wrote.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a concurring dissent, where she said she agreed with Sotomayor, but also called the ruling “an existential threat to the rule of law.”

“Focusing on inapt comparisons to impotent English tribunals, the majority ignores the Judiciary’s foundational duty to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States. The majority’s ruling thus not only diverges from first principles, it is also profoundly dangerous, since it gives the Executive the go-ahead to sometimes wield the kind of unchecked, arbitrary power the Founders crafted our Constitution to eradicate,” Jackson wrote. “With deep disillusionment, I dissent.”

Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) blamed the left for the trouble she had in getting her ectopic pregnancy treated.

In an appearance on Fox News Friday morning, surfaced by journalist Aaron Rupar, Cammack talks about her difficulty getting care for an ectopic pregnancy. An ectopic pregnancy is when an embryo implants itself in the fallopian tube or anywhere else other than the uterus.

Rep. Kat Cammack on her ectopic pregnancy that she says doctors wouldn't initially treat because of Florida's Republican abortion ban: "The left absolutely played a role in making sure that doctors and women were scared to seek out the help that they needed." pic.twitter.com/RsbBw0BoOk

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 27, 2025

“In my case, I was five weeks pregnant. There was no heartbeat and no ectopic pregnancy is viable, and that’s so important, because the mother needs care immediately. But unfortunately, women’s health care has been subject to the worst politic fear mongering that you can experience,” Cammack said. “These healthcare providers had been receiving pro-abortion lobby ads… that were threatening and scaring doctors away from helping women, saying that they could lose their license, they could go to jail.

“In fact, in the room, I had nurses and doctors showing me these advertisements, saying that they felt uncomfortable because they didn’t want to go to jail. They wanted to help me, but they couldn’t. They felt like they couldn’t do anything,” she continued.

“The left absolutely played a role in making sure that doctors and women were scared to seek out the help that they needed. And so I think that this is a wake up call,” Cammack said. “We need to get the politics out of women’s health care.”

READ MORE: DeSantis Busted by Florida Paper Over ‘Horrific’ Abortion Debate Tale

Florida bans abortion at six weeks from the first day of the parent’s last menstrual period, according to the ACLU. Most people discover they’re pregnant about eight weeks after the first day of their last period, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

The law only allows abortions after the six-week mark under certain conditions. Physicians must certify in writing that there is “a medical necessity for legitimate emergency medical procedure” that could kill the pregnant person or cause a “imminent substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function … other than a psychological condition.” The law requires two physicians to sign off, in writing, except in the case of emergencies, then only one physician is needed.

There is a provision for if the fetus as a fatal abnormality as long as it’s before the third trimester and, again, two physicians certify it in writing. Though there is an exception for pregnancy in the case of rape, incest or human trafficking, the pregnant person must provide evidence like a police report or court order. They must also do so before the 15-week mark.

The law also doesn’t define ectopic pregnancy, according to the Wall Street Journal, though regulators say treating an ectopic pregnancy doesn’t count as abortion, and is not covered by the law. Still, the draconian punishments outlined by the law have doctors worried.

Physicians who violate the law are committing a third-degree felony, which can be punished by up to five years in prison and fines up to $5,000. Doctors may also lose their medical license. Many doctors are unsure “whether their clinical judgment will stand should there be any prosecution,” Dr. Alison Haddock, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, told the Wall Street Journal.

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