Texas, like many States, prohibits distributing sexually explicit content to children. In 2023, Texas enacted H. B. 1181, requiring certain commercial websites publishing sexually explicit content that is obscene to minors to verify that visitors are 18 or older. Knowing violations subject covered entities to injunctions and civil penalties.

Petitioners—representatives of the pornography industry—sued the Texas attorney general to enjoin enforcement of H. B. 1181 as facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause. They alleged that adults have a right to access the covered speech, and that the statute impermissibly hinders them. The Fifth Circuit held that an injunction was not warranted because petitioners were unlikely to succeed on their First Amendment claim. The court viewed H. B. 1181 as a “regulatio[n] of the distribution to minors of materials obscene for minors.” 95 F. 4th 263, 269, 271. It therefore determined that the law is not subject to any heightened scrutiny under the First Amendment.

Held: H. B. 1181 triggers, and survives, review under intermediate scrutiny because it only incidentally burdens the protected speech of adults. Pp. 5–36.

(a) H. B. 1181 is subject to intermediate scrutiny. Pp. 5–32.

(1) To determine whether a law that regulates speech violates the First Amendment, the Court considers both the nature of the burden imposed by the law and the nature of the speech at issue. Laws that target protected speech “based on its communicative content” are presumptively unconstitutional and may be justified only if ” they satisfy strict scrutiny. Reed v. Town of Gilbert, 576 U. S. 155, 163. Laws that only incidentally burden protected speech are subject to intermediate scrutiny. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 512 U. S. 622, 642. And laws that restrict only unprotected speech, such as obscenity, receive rational-basis review. United States v. Stevens, 559 U. S. 460, 468. History, tradition, and precedent establish that sexual content that is obscene to minors but not to adults is protected in part and unprotected in part. States may prevent minors from accessing such content, Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U. S. 629, 637–638, but may not prevent adults from doing the same, Butler v. Michigan, 352 U. S. 380, 383. Pp. 6–13.

(2) H. B. 1181 has only an incidental effect on protected speech, and is therefore subject to intermediate scrutiny. The First Amendment leaves undisturbed States’ traditional power to prevent minors from accessing speech that is obscene from their perspective. That power includes the power to require proof of age before an individual can access such speech. It follows that no person—adult or child—has a First Amendment right to access such speech without first submitting proof of age.

The power to verify age is part of the power to prevent children from accessing speech that is obscene to them. Where the Constitution reserves a power to the States, that power includes “the ordinary and appropriate means” of exercising it. 1 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States §430, pp. 412–413. Requiring proof of age is an ordinary and appropriate means of enforcing an age-based limit on obscenity to minors. Age verification is common when laws draw age-based lines, e.g., obtaining alcohol, a firearm, or a driver’s license. Obscenity is no exception. Most States require age verification for in-person purchases of sexual material, and petitioners concede that in-person requirements of this kind are “traditional” and “almost surely” constitutional. Tr. of Oral Arg. 17. And as a practical matter, age-verification is necessary for an effective prohibition on minors accessing age-inappropriate sexual content, especially on the internet.

Because H. B. 1181 simply requires proof of age to access content that is obscene to minors, it does not directly regulate adults’ protected speech. Adults have the right to access speech obscene only to minors, see Butler, 352 U. S., at 383–384, and submitting to age verification burdens the exercise of that right. But adults have no First Amendment right to avoid age verification. Any burden on adults is therefore incidental to regulating activity not protected by the First Amendment. This makes intermediate scrutiny the appropriate standard under the Court’s precedents. Pp. 13–19.

(3) Applying the more demanding standard of strict scrutiny would call into question all age-verification requirements, even longstanding in-person requirements. Although petitioners insist that traditional in-person requirements would survive strict scrutiny, the Court cannot share their confidence. Strict scrutiny is designed to enforce the First Amendment’s prohibition on content-based laws, and it succeeds in that purpose only if, as a practical matter, it is almost always fatal in fact. Strict scrutiny is not the appropriate standard for laws that are traditional and widely accepted as legitimate. Pp. 19–21.

(4) Precedent does not call for the application of strict scrutiny. The Court’s decisions applying strict scrutiny in this context all involved laws that banned both minors and adults from accessing speech that was at most obscene only to minors. See Sable Communications of Cal., Inc. v. FCC, 492 U. S. 115, 118, 126; United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, Inc., 529 U. S. 803, 808, 811, 814; Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844, 868, 876; Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 542 U. S. 656, 665. The Court has never before considered whether the more modest burden of an age-verification requirement triggers strict scrutiny. Pp. 21–28.

(5) Texas contends that only rational-basis review applies. This position fails to account for the incidental burden that age verification necessarily has on an adult’s First Amendment right to access speech obscene only to minors. Although deferential, intermediate scrutiny plays an important role in ensuring that legislatures do not use ostensibly legitimate purposes to disguise efforts to suppress fundamental rights. Pp. 31–32.

(b) H. B. 1181 survives intermediate scrutiny because it “advances important governmental interests unrelated to the suppression of free speech and does not burden substantially more speech than necessary to further those interests.” Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 520 U. S. 180, 189. Pp. 32–36.

(1) H. B. 1181 furthers Texas’s important interest in shielding children from sexual content and is adequately tailored to that interest. States have long used age-verification requirements to reconcile their interest in protecting children from sexual material with adults’ right to avail themselves of such material. H. B. 1181 simply adapts this traditional approach to the digital age. The specific verification methods that H. B. 1181 permits—government-issued identification and transactional data—are also plainly legitimate. Both are established methods of verifying age already in use by many pornographic websites and other industries with age-restricted services. Pp. 32–34.

(2) Petitioners’ counterarguments are unpersuasive. Petitioners object that other means of protecting children are more effective and that children are likely to encounter sexually explicit content on other websites subject to H. B. 1181’s requirements. But intermediate scrutiny does not require States to adopt the least restrictive means of pursuing their interests, Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U. S. 781, 800, or avoid all underinclusiveness, TikTok Inc. v. Garland, 604 U. S. ___, ___. Pp. 34–35.

95 F. 4th 263, affirmed.

Thomas, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, JJ., joined. Kagan, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Sotomayor and Jackson, JJ., joined.