If you create or subscribe on an adult platform, 2025 was the year the rules actually changed. A Supreme Court ruling reset creator platform age verification for adult subscription sites, and states have been adding their own laws ever since. Here's the quick version of what happened and why it matters.

The Ruling, in Plain English

In June 2025, the Supreme Court upheld a Texas law requiring adult websites to check that visitors are 18 or older before letting them in. The Court decided this kind of check only places a small burden on adults, which let the law clear an easier legal bar than similar rules had faced in the past. That's a real shift from earlier rulings, and it's already opened the door to more state laws following the same approach.

Why It's Spreading State by State

At least half the country now has some form of age verification law on the books, with more arriving through 2026. For platforms, that means government ID verification isn't optional anymore. It's simply what running a legal adult platform in the US now involves.

What This Means for Creators

This isn't just a legal technicality. Every platform now has two jobs: checking a visitor's age, and protecting the sensitive ID data that check creates. Get either one wrong, and the consequences land on creators as much as the platform itself, whether that's steep fines or a data breach.

That's why the real question for creators isn't whether a platform does ID and age checks. Nearly all of them do now. It's what happens to that data afterward, how clearly a platform explains its state-by-state compliance, and what happens to a creator's account if the rules shift again.

Read the Full Breakdown

We go through the ruling, the state-by-state fallout, and the questions worth asking any platform about its approach to age verification and ID checks in the full article: Creator Platform Age Verification: What Changed in 2025.