A federal court has upheld a Texas law passed last year to protect children from adult content that requires pornography websites to verify users’ age.
Yet the largest online platform for sharing pornographic videos is still violating the law, despite a $1.6 million civil lawsuit filed by the state.
The law, known as House Bill 1181, requires commercial porn websites to use “reasonable” methods to verify that users are at least 18 years of age before they access X-rated content online. Violators face fines of $10,000 a day.
The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion on March 7 upholding the law’s age-verification requirements as constitutional.
Attorney Rob Farquharson called the ruling “a massive win for Texas kids and Texas families.”
Farquharson drafted an amicus brief in support of the law on behalf of State Rep. Nate Schatzline (R–Fort Worth) and State Sen. Bob Hall (R–Edgewood), who co-authored/co-sponsored HB 1181.
Pornhub—the largest online platform for sharing sex videos—had sued Texas along with other pro-porn plaintiffs to keep HB 1181 from taking effect, claiming that the law violates the First Amendment and porn users’ privacy.
A federal district judge sided with porn industry plaintiffs and issued a preliminary injunction against enforcing the law.
Texas appealed, and Fifth Circuit judges ruled last November that Texas could enforce the law pending appeal, lifting the preliminary injunction.
Last week’s Fifth Circuit ruling addressed the merits of the preliminary injunction and concluded the porn industry plaintiffs are unlikely to succeed in their challenge to the age verification requirements.
The court kept in place an injunction against a provision of the law requiring porn sites to post health warnings about the dangers of viewing pornography.
Just before the appellate court’s latest ruling, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office filed a civil lawsuit against Aylo Global Entertainment, the porn conglomerate that now owns Pornhub.
The February 26 lawsuit calculated that Pornhub had violated the law for 160 days and thus owed the state $1,600,000, plus $10,000 for every additional day of noncompliance.
Pornhub and other adult sites may also be charged an additional $10,000 per day if they illegally retain users’ identifying information, and $250,000 if a child is exposed to pornographic content because sites fail to verify users’ age.
Aylo said in a statement to Texas Scorecard that the company is “reviewing options and consulting with our legal team,” adding that the age-verification law will “reduce content creators’ ability to post and distribute legal adult content and directly impact their ability to share the artistic messages they want to convey with it.”
Seven other states have passed age-verification laws: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Utah, and Virginia.
Rather than implement age verification, Pornhub has blocked access to all users in those states.
As of today, Pornhub has not implemented age verification or blocked Texas users from accessing its site.
Pornhub is the target of multiple lawsuits accusing the company of profiting from uploaded videos of child sexual abuse featuring victims as young as three years old.
Pornography is a multibillion-dollar global industry.
