WASHINGTON >> The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed open to a Texas law aimed at blocking kids from seeing online pornography, though the justices could still send it back to a lower court for more consideration of how the age verification measure affects adults’ free-speech rights.

Texas is among more than a dozen states with such laws aimed at blocking young children and teenagers from viewing pornography. The states argue the laws are necessary as online porn, including hardcore obscene material, has become almost instantaneous to access on smartphones online.

Chief Justice John Roberts, a member of the court’s conservative majority, raised similar concerns. “Technological access to pornography has exploded, right?” he said.

The Free Speech Coalition, an adult-entertainment industry trade group, says the Texas law wrongly affects adults by requiring them to submit personal identifying information online, making it vulnerable to hacking or tracking. The adult-content website Pornhub has stopped operating in several states, citing the technical and privacy hurdles in complying with the laws.

The Free Speech Coalition agrees that children shouldn’t be seeing pornography, but it argues the new law is so broadly written it could also apply to sexual education content or simulated sex scenes in movies.

The law also leaves a loophole by focusing on porn sites rather than the search engines often used to find porn, the group says in court documents. Content filtering is a better alternative to online age checks, it says.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett appeared skeptical, pointing to the growing number of ways kids can get online.

“Content filtering for all those different devices, I can say from personal experience, is difficult to keep up with,” said Barrett, who has seven children.