A group of pornography companies, including Pornhub, is suing Texas ahead of the state’s pending enforcement of a law that requires age verification on pornography websites.
The Free Speech Coalition, the trade association for the adult entertainment industry, teamed with Pornhub and other pornography companies to file a lawsuit this month in federal court that claims requirements for consumers to verify their age online to access pornography are a violation of the First, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
“The Act joins a long tradition of unconstitutional — and ultimately failed — governmental attempts to regulate and censor free speech on the internet,” the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit claims that Texas’ new law, set to be enforced next month, is “overbroad and fails strict scrutiny.” Plaintiffs argue the law targets them unfairly as it does not include regulations on “search engines and most social media sites,” which they claim “pose a greater risk of exposure to adult content.”
A more effective way to ensure minors do not access pornography, the groups argue, is for consumers to monitor devices individually.
“In contrast, content filtering at the browser and/or the device level allows anyone wishing to implement that technology on minors’ devices to block access to any unwanted site, including adult sites, without impairing free speech rights or privacy,” the lawsuit states. “But such far more effective and far less restrictive means don’t really matter to Texas, whose true aim is not to protect minors but to squelch constitutionally protected free speech that the State disfavors.”
The Texas law also requires pornography websites to issue a health notice that states pornography is “potentially biologically addictive” and “proven to harm human brain development.” Plaintiffs claim that this notice is “factually false.”
The average child first encounters pornography at 12 years old, a January study from Common Sense Media found. Medical studies have linked pornography consumption to dangerously addictive levels of dopamine activity in the brain.
Pornhub is the fourth most viewed website in the U.S., behind YouTube, Google, and Facebook, according to Semrush.
Bills similar to one in Texas that require identification for pornography websites have been passed in Louisiana, Arkansas, Montana, Mississippi, Utah, and Virginia. Pornhub’s parent company, MindGeek, shut down operations in Mississippi, Utah, and Virginia after the laws were enacted.
