HOUSTON – The nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has filed a motion seeking an injunction to block the implementation of the SCOPE Act.
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The law Securing Children Online Through Parental Empowerment Act (SCOPE) was passed last year and signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott.
The SCOPE Act limits online access for minors. It takes effect on September 1 and requires age verification for “harmful material.”
The Act intends to “prevent the known minor’s exposure to harmful material and other content that promotes, glorifies, or facilitates:
- (1) suicide, self-harm, or eating disorders;
- (2) substance abuse;
- (3) stalking, bullying, or harassment; or
- (4) grooming, trafficking, child pornography, or other sexual exploitation or abuse.
In the preliminary injunction, FIRE states, “This case concerns a brazen act of overt content-based censorship and prior restraint. Defying the Supreme Court’s consistent reaffirmation that governments have no ‘free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed,’ the motion reads. It “mandates age registration, prohibits young people in Texas from accessing and exchanging protected speech based on its subject matter, and bars Texans from sending and receiving directed communications based on their contents and intended audience. The Act also threatens the rights of Texans of all ages by compelling online intermediaries to enforce additional age-verification requirements triggered by a vague and arbitrary content-based threshold that will pressure online publishers to limit the expressive content they disseminate.”
According to the law, the state intends to use “filtering technology and other protocols to enforce the blocking of material or content on the list,” while using hash-sharing technology and other protocols to identify recurring harmful material or other content.”
KPRC 2 Rilwan Balogun is working on this story for our later newscasts, and we want to know how you identify ‘harmful’ and ‘obscene.’ We may use your comments for our story.