Porn case in the Supreme Court this week is about protecting children, says Republican AG

Meanwhile, a collection of porn sites calling itself the Free Speech Coalition argues that the Texas law curbs their First Amendment rights and places an undue burden on Texas adults from accessing their content.   

The question before the court now is whether the Texas law should be subject to "rational basis" or "strict scrutiny" review, the latter of which would require Texas to meet the narrowest standards to uphold the age verification requirement.

Whichever way the court rules will likely impact not only the Texas law but also the over a dozen other porn site age verification laws in states across the country.

In an interview with Fox News Digital after the hearing, Paxton said he feels confident that the Supreme Court will rule in Texas' favor.

"Hearing the questions and seeing the comments by the justices I feel very optimistic, I think we're going to win this," he said. "I really feel good about it. I think most of the justices are going to come down on the right side."

"Even the other side making their arguments admitted that we have an interest in protecting minors," he went on. "They just said that the way we were doing that was some type of overburden on adults, and so they offered up other suggestions, those suggestions don't actually work and that's probably why they offered them up, they don't want age verification because it actually works, and it affects their bottom line." 

In response to criticisms about the law potentially violating free speech, Paxton said: "Look I'm a huge free speech advocate. I see very few limitations on free speech. However, we have recognized that we need to protect children in all kinds of different ways. We don't let them sign contracts, we don't let them get married until they're 18, we don't let them be served alcohol, we don't let them get tobacco, we have protected children, it's been [throughout] our entire history."

"If you look anywhere in the developed world or anywhere [else], children are protected," he added. "It's my job to enforce Texas law. In this case I feel very comfortable protecting our children from having this put in front of them."