§ 129B.004.Sexual Materials Health Warnings

A compelled-disclosure requirement, prescribed word for word.

Subdivision (1) requires three notices on the landing page and all advertisements, in 14-point font or larger, each headed TEXAS HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES WARNING. They state that pornography is potentially biologically addictive and harms brain development; that exposure is associated with low self-esteem and body image, eating disorders, impaired brain development and other illnesses; and that it increases the demand for prostitution, child exploitation, and child pornography.

Subdivision (2) requires, at the bottom of every page, also in 14-point font or larger, the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration helpline notice, giving the number and describing the service.

These are compelled statements, not disclosures of the seller’s own terms, and that is what distinguishes them constitutionally from an ordinary labelling requirement. The state requires a private party to publish the state’s assertions about the effects of a lawful product.

The propositions are contestable. Whether pornography is "biologically addictive" is a matter on which the scientific literature is not settled, and a requirement to publish a contested claim as an official warning is a different thing from requiring a factual disclosure.

That distinction has been central to the litigation over the chapter.

Note that the health warnings attach only to entities caught by the one-third publication threshold — the section is keyed to subsection (a) of the verification provision, not to the AI-tool obligation.

A note on the text: the helpline notice was emitted out of order in the source and had to be restored to this section from the next one.