AUSTIN, Texas — A lengthy brief filed in a federal appeals court in Texas supporting the state’s new controversial age verification and mandatory labeling law was authored by an extreme-right Virginia attorney with Trump links on behalf of an obscure organization led by a Colorado-based religious conservative activist and former child actor.
The amicus brief was filed by a Virginia-based law firm on behalf of a shadowy group calling itself “Council on Pornography Reform” (CPR). That group’s website was non-functional at the time of this article’s writing and they do not appear to have an online footprint in non-profit databases before last week.
The filing of the amicus brief garnered mainstream attention because CPR was reportedly founded by Rick Schroder, a religious conservative activist who had a mainstream acting career in the last century starting when he was a child, for most of which he was known as “Ricky Schroder.”
According to press reports it was Schroder who “launched an initiative called the Council on Pornography Reform,” aiming to “bring about legislative changes regarding X-rated content in the United States.”
But Schroder — who has been mostly in the news recently regarding his religious and political activism — does not appear to be a resident of Texas, currently residing according to statements he gave to the press in Mesa, Colorado. In the past, he has also resided in the Los Angeles area in California.
For those familiar with recent GOP history, however, the most significant name in the amicus brief filed in Austin is not Schroder’s but rather the that of the author of the brief itself, a right-wing Virginia attorney named William J. Olson, who also practices in Washington D.C.
Olson’s brief on behalf of the obscure CPR non-profit is an attempt to influence the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges in the Free Speech Coalition v. Colmenero (now Paxton) case.
AS XBIZ reported, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals heard arguments earlier this month regarding the injunction against enforcement of Texas’ controversial age verification law, which mandates that adult websites post anti-porn propaganda.
Texas authorities had asked the panel to lift the injunction, which was obtained on Aug. 31 by Free Speech Coalition (FSC) and other plaintiffs. HB 1181 was passed by the Texas legislature with bipartisan support in May and was scheduled to go into effect Sept. 1.
The injunction — issued by Senior U.S. District Judge David Ezra, a Ronald Reagan appointee — blocks the Texas attorney general from enforcing the Republican-authored anti-porn age verification law while the case is litigated.
Olson’s brief on behalf of CPR overtly attempts to strip adult content form the First Amendment protections it has enjoyed since the early 1970s.
Olson’s law firm issued a statement taking full ownership of the amicus brief in the Texas case. “Today, our firm filed an amicus brief in the Fifth Circuit to help defend a Texas law enacted to require age verification for pornographic websites,” they wrote. “An adult entertainment association and others challenged the law, and a federal district judge issued an injunction against the law, preventing it from taking effect. Our amicus brief argued that the district court employed an interest balancing test which empowers judges to circumvent the proper application of constitutional rights.”
Olson’s firm also proudly claims to have educated the judges on “how the Supreme Court improperly federalized obscenity law using the First Amendment, thus usurping the States’ police power over obscenity and defamation. Finally, we argued that the Supreme Court’s precedents on pornography have been based on the so-called ‘freedom of expression’ — which is not in the First Amendment — thus unmooring it from the text and history of the freedoms of speech and press actually protected by the First Amendment.”
‘An Extreme, Far-Right Figure’
Olson’s name is familiar to those interested in the investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection following former President Donald Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which resulted in an impeachment trial and continue to be litigated in several courts.
Olson claimed to be part of “a little band of lawyers” attempting to provide legal cover for Trump’s plans.
According to an extensive New York Times report published in 2022, Olson had significant communications with then-President Trump in the weeks leading up to the insurrection.
The Times’ political reporters Maggie Haberman and Luke Broadwater described how on Christmas Day in 2020, Trump spoke with Olson on the phone from his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Fla..
According to a memo Olson himself wrote documenting the call, grandiosely titled “Preserving Constitutional Order,” he encouraged Trump’s attempts to overturn the election
Olson “was promoting several extreme ideas to the president,” the Time reported. “Mr. Olson later conceded that part of his plan could be regarded as tantamount to declaring ‘martial law’ and that another aspect could invite comparisons with Watergate. The plan included tampering with the Justice Department and firing the acting attorney general.”
“Our little band of lawyers is working on a memorandum that explains exactly what you can do,” Olson wrote in his memo, which he then sent to the president. “The media will call this martial law,” he warned, but added “that is ‘fake news.’”
The Times’ article characterized Olson as one of a number of “extreme, far-right figures” orbiting around Trump in the weeks preceding the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Olson is also described as the attorney for “conspiracy theorist and MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell” and gun-rights group Gun Owners of America. He has worked with Republican super PACs and “promoted a conspiracy theory that Vice President Kamala Harris is not eligible to be vice president, falsely claiming she is not a natural-born U.S. citizen,” the Times reported.
Olson’s website, which shows him shaking hands with Richard Nixon and states he was a White House intern in 1971, shortly before the Watergate break-in. There are also photos with Clarence Thomas and with disgraced Reagan-era would-be censor Ed Meese.
Olson’s law firm website also features a selection of “Favorite Bible Verses.”
A Former Child Actor Speaking Through a Faith-Based News Site
Although the veteran Virginia right-wing operative Olsen is the actual author of the brief, Schroder — as supposed head of the CPR group — is being paraded as a mouthpiece of the proposed anti-porn measures.
“It’s absolutely absurd that they use the First Amendment and freedom of speech as political speech, as the justification for pushing perversion and pornography into our homes, into our pockets,” Schroder told The Western Journal, which originated coverage of the brief.
The Western Journal is a news publication that describes itself as “upholding traditional Christian values as articulated in the Bible. These values include beliefs in original sin, the fallen nature of man, the exclusivity of Christ, the need for government to restrain men from injuring each other, the fundamental value of every human life — including the unborn, a rejection of racism in all forms, and the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. Politically, The Western Journal advocates for broadly conservative positions on most issues, including abortion, national defense, small government, same-sex marriage, tax policy and individual freedom.”
Schroder — whose Instagram account proudly displays an image of a historically-inaccurate, European-looking Jesus given the viewer the middle finger — admitted that although the Texas explicitly addresses screening minors, “we need to go further than age verification.”
Schroder explained that he wants the government to mandate “an ‘off’ switch for those of us who choose not to have it pushed. The rest of you out there in America can have it. Americans love choice. I don’t want it pushed to my house, my phone, my kids’ phones. Whoever pays that bill should have the right to have the adult content turned off at the service provider level.”
The religious conservative Western Journal states that Schroder’s CPR has identified five areas for legislative change regarding pornography, including age verification is one, separating explicit material into an easily censorable “.xxx” domain on the internet, rather than “.com,”developing “social media algorithms for underage users” [sic] “which would block pornography from coming to the devices they are using” and, ominously, “the development and enforcement of robust artificial intelligence standards and procedures concerning adult content.”
Schroder is explicitly religious in his opinions about adult content, calling all pornography “a weapon system against God, against common sense. It’s a sickness, it’s a disease and it’s permeated us for too long, and it doesn’t have to stay this way.
Schroder also told The Western Journal that he plans to produce a documentary series about pornography reform called “Erotic Erosion.”
Main Image: Religious right attorney and GOP activist William J. Olson with Justice Clarence Thomas (Photo: Lawandfreedom.com)
