Porn group asks judge to put a hold on Utah’s law requiring age verification for adult content
Lawyers for a trade association representing the adult industry are asking a judge to put a hold on Utah’s new law that requires websites with pornographic material to verify the age of its users.
In court documents filed in federal court Wednesday, attorneys for the Free Speech Coalition asked for a preliminary injunction, claiming the law “restricts constitutionally protected content in a manner that is woefully ineffective, poorly tailored to the State’s interest, overbroad, vague, and disruptive to interstate commerce.”
It’s the latest development in the group’s lawsuit against Utah filed about a month earlier, which contends the new law violates the First Amendment.
Related
Sponsored by Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, SB287 was passed unanimously during the 2023 session. It’s an attempt to ensure all Utahns who access pornography online are at least 18 years old and allows companies to be sued for damages that stem from a minor accessing the adult content if they fail “to perform reasonable age verification methods.”
Weiler recently told the Deseret News that it’s possible the state will solicit help from a private company so the age verification can be done at no cost to taxpayers.
After it took effect, one of the world’s most popular websites for adult content, Pornhub, blocked access for all of Utah — the lawsuit from the Free Speech Coalition followed, arguing the law violates the First Amendment because it imposes a “content-based restriction on protected speech” but doesn’t accomplish its stated purpose because minors can “easily obtain” the content “from other sources and via other means,” according to the complaint.
The motion filed Thursday uses a similar argument, claiming the law “imposes substantial burdens on content providers that want to publish constitutionally-protected materials on the internet.”
“It precludes older minors from accessing important information about sex and sexuality at a time in their lives when they need it most,” court documents read. “And it sweeps within its ambit a large swath of content published by pornographic and nonpornographic websites alike that adults have a First Amendment right to share and receive without state interference.”
The motion also says Utah’s laws are easy to bypass, and that “residents immediately began using VPNs to circumvent the pornography blackout.” According to Google Trends, searches for “VPN,” or virtual private networks, in Utah far exceeded other states in the days after the law took effect.
And the law violates the Commerce Clause, a law that restricts states from impairing interstate commerce, “by impinging on communication occurring outside Utah’s borders,” the Free Speech Coalition says.
Utah now has an opportunity to file a response to the motion before the judge rules.
