Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Friday that a new ruling will allow his office to enforce a law requiring age verification prior to viewing pornographic materials online.
An order was issued by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to stay the district court’s injunction against the law, meaning Paxton now has the authority to enforce HB 1181, according to a press release sent to The Dallas Express.
“Texas has a right to protect its children from the detrimental effects of pornographic content,” said Paxton in the press release. “As new technology makes harmful content more accessible than ever, we must make every effort to defend those who are most vulnerable.”
The Texas Legislature passed HB 1181 earlier this year, which would require companies that knowingly publish pornographic material on their sites to “use reasonable age verification methods” to determine if a user is over the age of 18, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Companies that do not comply with such requirements could face fines that include $10,000 for each day of operation without an age verification system, $10,000 for every instance where a company retains information from a user, and up to $250,000 in fines if a user under the age of 18 accesses the material due to a company’s failure to enforce the law.
After lawmakers passed the bill, multiple pornography companies, including the owners or operators of Pornhub, XVideos, and XNXX, filed a lawsuit in an attempt to prevent it from going into effect, according to the press release.
The lawsuit alleges that the bill violates the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, “which prohibits treating website operators as if they were responsible for alleged harm caused by content created by third parties.”
While Paxton has voiced his support for the law since it was passed, others have been more skeptical about the new bill.
Mike Stabile of the Texas Freedom Coalition previously wrote in a statement to The Dallas Express that the law is “ineffective, dangerous and unconstitutional.”
“We understand that many have moral opposition to adult content, but regardless of where we stand in faith or politics, we should all be concerned about the government instituting digital ID requirements to access the internet,” wrote Stabile. “As citizens, we have the right, guaranteed by the First Amendment, to access legal information on the internet without risk of government surveillance.”
