Global Courant 2023-05-05 05:25:29
An adult entertainment industry group filed a lawsuit Wednesday against a new law in Utah that would require porn websites to implement age-verification mechanisms to deny minors access to sexually explicit material.
The law, which went into effect Wednesday, made Utah the second state to require adult websites to verify the age of those seeking to view their pages — through an independent contractor or digital ID. Lawmakers compared the requirement to that for alcohol or online gambling and argued that stronger protections were needed to protect children from pornography, which is ubiquitous on the Internet.
The Free Speech Coalition — along with an erotica author and adult website companies that are parties to the lawsuit — argues that Utah’s new law unfairly discriminates against certain types of speech, violates the First Amendment rights of porn providers, and invades the privacy of persons who wish to view sexually explicit material. The plaintiffs have asked a federal judge to defer enforcement of the law until their legal challenge is resolved.
PORNHUB BLOCKS ACCESS TO USERS IN UTAH OVER AGE VERIFICATION LAW
They argue that the age-verification law “imposes a content-based restriction on protected speech that requires close tailoring to serve a compelling state interest.”
It is currently illegal to display child pornography under federal law, but that law is rarely enforced.
The state of Utah has been sued over a law requiring age verification to access pornographic websites. (AP photo/Rick Bowmer, file)
Utah’s new law is the conservative state’s latest effort to restrict access to pornography and joins other efforts by lawmakers to restrict children’s use of the Internet, including social media sites. It comes less than a year after Louisiana passed a similar law and other states are considering policies like filters or age verification for adult websites.
The Utah law builds on years of anti-porn efforts by the Republican-controlled legislature, where a majority of legislators are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It comes seven years after Utah became the first state to declare pornography a public health emergency and two years after lawmakers passed a measure paving the way to requiring internet-enabled devices to be equipped with child porn filters. Provisions of the law delay its entry into force unless at least five other states take similar action.
The age verification law is being heavily pushed back, including one of the largest porn sites, Pornhub, which banned access to its site in Utah earlier this week.
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The Free Speech Coalition has previously filed similar challenges. In 2002, the case against a federal statute for child pornography went to the US Supreme Court, which struck down provisions for excessive interference with free speech.
