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SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah law requiring sites that have "material harmful to minors" to verify users' age through a government-issued ID before allowing access to the site will remain in effect after a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit from adult entertainment companies claiming the law was unconstitutional.
The law in question, SB287, went into effect on May 3.
The Free Speech Coalition filed the lawsuit in May in federal court, claiming the state was violating the First and 14th Amendments of the Constitution — specifically, infringing upon the rights to free speech and privacy. The plaintiffs include the coalition, Utah-based erotica author D.S. Dawson, an anonymous adult entertainment attorney, and sexual content creators and platforms.
The defendants named in the suit were Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes and Jess Anderson, the commissioner of the Utah Department of Public Safety.
The defendants motioned for a dismissal based on "lack of subject matter jurisdiction," and U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart granted the motion on Tuesday.
In dismissing their lawsuit on Tuesday, he said they couldn't sue Utah officials because of how the law calls for age verification to be enforced, the Associated Press reported. The law doesn't direct the state to pursue or prosecute adult websites and instead gives Utah residents the power to sue them and collect damages if they don't take precautions to verify their users' ages.
"They cannot just receive a pre-enforcement injunction," Stewart wrote in his dismissal, citing a 2021 U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding a Texas law allowing private citizens to sue abortion providers.
The Free Speech Coalition says it will appeal the court's decision.
This morning, a district court judge granted a Motion to Dismiss in our challenge to Utah's age-verification law — a decision FSC will now fully appeal. We always knew the fight would be tough, and we've come prepared.
— Free Speech Coalition (@FSCArmy) August 1, 2023
See you in court, Utah (again).https://t.co/8COnzKUlQQ
Background on SB287
The purpose SB287 is to try and protect children from explicit sexual content, said Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross. "I'm not gonna blame all of society's ills on pornography, but I don't think it's helpful when a kid is forming their impressions of sex and gender to have all of this filth and lewd depictions on their mind."
The lawsuit came on the heels of Pornhub blocking its content throughout the state since May 1. Anyone in Utah who tries to access Pornhub, one of the most popular adult websites, will instead see a letter and video, which state that the new law is not effective and there are other, better solutions to protecting children.
The coalition's argument in the lawsuit is similar to Pornhub's — that the new law is too vague and doesn't say how a site's material is measured to be "harmful to children" or not. Also, the complaint states, the law isn't easily enforceable. Users can get around the law using a VPN or the dark web.
Instead, the coalition suggests that parental controls and filtering software and apps can help protect children more than age verification would.
"The Utah law restricts adults' access to legal speech and violates decades of Supreme Court precedent," the coalition's executive director, Alison Boden, said in a statement when the lawsuit was first filed. "We are fighting not only for the rights of our members and the larger adult entertainment community, but for the right of all Americans to access constitutionally protected expression in the privacy of their own home."
Utah is the second state to pass laws requiring age verification for access to adult entertainment websites. Louisiana passed the first in 2022 and is also facing a lawsuit from an adult entertainment group.
