Comment by rayiner

4 hours ago

> Previously the Fifth Circuit had relied heavily on Ginsberg v. New York (1968) to justify rational basis review. But Ginsberg was a narrow scope - it held that minors don't have the same First Amendment rights as adults to access "obscene as to minors" material. It wasn't about burdens on adults at all.

Ginsberg was about burdens on adults. In that case, New York law prohibited the sale of content containing nude images to minors. The Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a store owner under that law, who had sold magazines containing nude pictures to underage buyers: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1967/47.

Ginsberg acknowledged that the magazines did not qualify as obscenity as to adults--selling the magazines in question to adults was protected First Amendment conduct. So the age checking necessarily required by the law was a burden on those First Amendment protected sales. Ginsberg necessarily found that burden to be a permissible one.