Texas and its Attorney General Ken Paxton have finally defeated PornHub in the state's attempts to enforce an age-verification law, leading the pornography giant to announce it is shutting down its operations statewide. 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit on Tuesday vacated a previous injunction against an age-verification requirement to access the site, meaning the rules will remain in place. 

However, the court did uphold an injunction against a section of House Bill 1181 forcing the pornography provider to display a health warning on its landing page and all advertisements. 

In an open letter to users on Thursday, PornHub argued that the ban was a violation of its First Amendment rights, while also pointing out that the rules do not apply to other pornography providers: 

As you may know, your elected officials in Texas are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website. Not only does this impinge on the rights of adults to access protected speech, it fails strict scrutiny by employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas’s stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors. 

Attempting to mandate age verification without any means to enforce at scale gives platforms the choice to comply or not, leaving thousands of platforms open and accessible. As we've seen in other states, such bills have failed to protect minors, by driving users from those few websites which comply, to the thousands of websites, with far fewer safety measures in place, which do not comply. 

The company, which provides one of the world's largest pornography platforms, goes on to declare that the law will be ineffective and safety is one of its biggest concerns: 

Unfortunately, the Texas law for age verification is ineffective, haphazard and dangerous. Not only will it not actually protect children, but it will also inevitably reduce contentcreators’ ability to post and distribute legal adult content and directly impact their ability to share the artistic messagesthey want to convey with it. 

Until the real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Texas. In doing so, we are complying with the law, as we always do, but hope that governments around the world will implement laws that actually protect the safety and security of users.

The decision earlier this week was celebrated by conservative groups, including the Texas Family Project, whose president Brady Gray described it as a victory: 

Texas families just keep winning! First a dominant election night for grassroots conservatives, then the 5th circuit ruling on parental consent for contraceptions, and now this. Pornhub has disabled access to its platform in Texas.”

I’m incredibly thankful for pro-family champions like Nate Schatzline who made this a hill worth dying on in the 88th legislature and Ken Paxton, who continues to prove why he is the greatest AG in the country.

Texas is far from the only state to pass such legislation. Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Utah, and Virginia have all passed similar age verification laws, leading PornHub to pull out of all seven of those states as well.