Adult Entertainment Industry Group Sues Over Utah’s New Age Verification Law

A screen displays a “no under-18s” sign in front of the logo of a pornographic website as regulators consider requiring such sites to ensure they are preventing minors from being exposed to their content. Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images

The state of Utah is being sued over its new age verification law requiring companies that publish adult content to verify users’ ages before allowing them to view material on their sites.

The Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for the adult entertainment industry, filed a federal lawsuit on May 3 alongside Andrea Barrica, founder of the sex education site O.school; journalist, educator, and content creator Charyn “Ryn” Pfeuffer; Utah-based erotica writer D.S. Dawson; an anonymous Utah-based attorney identified as “John Doe;” and platform JustFor.Fan.

They allege that the state’s new law “restricts adults’ access to legal speech and violates decades of Supreme Court precedent.”

“After numerous federal court decisions invalidating as unconstitutional state and federal laws seeking to regulate or ban the publication of material harmful to minors on the internet, the Utah legislature has tried once more,” the plaintiffs write in their lawsuit (pdf) filed in state court.

“The new law places substantial burdens on Plaintiff website operators, content creators, and countless others who use the internet by requiring websites to age-verify every internet user before providing access to non-obscene material that meets the State’s murky definition of ’material harmful to minors’,” they added.

Plaintiffs argue that the new law violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution because it unfairly discriminates against certain kinds of speech and expression and intrudes upon fundamental liberty and privacy rights.

Kids May Resort to ‘Dark Web’

It also violates the Commerce and Supremacy Clauses of the U.S. Constitution, because it “impermissibly burdens Plaintiffs’ exercise of their rights thereunder in myriad ways,” they state.

The plaintiffs also claim that the new law could lead to children “resorting to the dark web to obtain material far more harmful than what is available from popular adult websites.”

They are asking the judge to declare that the new law violates their First and Fourteenth Amendments and bar the law from being enforced until their legal challenge is resolved. They are also seeking reasonable costs and fees.

The lawsuit lists Jess Anderson, commissioner of the Utah Department of Public Safety, and Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes as defendants.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox last month signed into law Senate Bill 287, also known as the “Online Pornography Viewing Age Requirements,” and the measure went into effect on Wednesday.

Under the legislation, commercial entities that provide pornography or other materials harmful to minors are required to verify users’ ages through “reasonable age-verification methods” before they can access such material.

This includes digital identity cards or third-party age-verification services that compare the personal information entered by the individual seeking to access the website to material available from either a commercially available database or an aggregate of databases, used by government agencies to confirm identities or age.

Companies publishing adult content may also use “any commercially reasonable method that relies on public or private transactional data” to confirm the individual’s identity when they attempt to access the material, the bill states.

Commercial entities that “knowingly and intentionally” publish or distribute a “substantial portion” of material that is harmful to minors online without performing reasonable age verification methods risk being held liable under the law, including for damages and court costs resulting from the minor accessing the material.

Pornhub Disables Access in Utah

“The Utah law restricts adults’ access to legal speech and violates decades of Supreme Court precedent,” said Alison Boden, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition in a statement. “We are fighting not only for the rights of our members and the larger adult entertainment community but for the right of all Americans to access constitutionally-protected expression in the privacy of their own home.”

“Adult websites don’t want children accessing their content any more than the State of Utah does. But the solutions put forward in SB287 put an unreasonable burden on free expression that we believe are meant to have a chilling effect for all Utahns,” she added.

The lawsuit comes just days after Pornhub disabled access to its website in Utah in response to the new law.

“As you may know, your elected officials in Utah are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website,” the company said in a statement on its website. “While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk.”

“Until a real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Utah,” it added.

In a statement to Axios, Republican state Sen. Todd Weiler, the bill’s sponsor, said, “None of us intended to block any adults from viewing pornography.”

He likened Pornhub’s move to disable access to the website in Utah to a publicity stunt, adding that age verification tools such as ID cards could prevent children from accessing explicit content sites while allowing adults to use them.

The Epoch Times has contacted Utah’s Department of Public Safety and the state’s attorney general for comment.