Utahns have been blocked from PornHub for two years now.
The adult content website cut Utah off over a state law that requires visitors to verify their age.
Louisiana was the first state to pass a law in 2022. After Gov. Spencer Cox signed Utah’s bill into law the next year, similar legislation popped up around the nation. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative organization, pushed for predominantly red states to pass these laws.
Twenty-two states now have age verification laws, and the Free Speech Coalition, which represents adult content sites and creators, has seven lawsuits in the works. The free speech implications of these laws have even climbed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. A decision in Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton is expected soon.
The Republican sponsor of Utah’s law, Sen. Todd Weiler, said the intent was to stop anyone under the age of 18 from watching explicit content. Age verification, he said, isn’t a new concept.
“Just like tobacco companies and gambling companies and direct wine shipments, you can't sell these products on the internet to 14-year-old girls in Topeka, Kansas,” Weiler told KUER. “We're just asking porn sites to do the same thing. Don't let kids see adult material.”
The law doesn’t specify how sites are supposed to verify age and leaves enforcement up to individual companies. The way the law is written places the burden of age verification on the companies, not the state. But the Free Speech Coalition said the law was essentially impossible to abide by and raised numerous privacy and censorship concerns.
Mike Stabile, the coalition’s director of public policy, said it was simpler for PornHub and similar sites to block Utahns altogether, not because they want minors accessing adult content but because “the laws are so burdensome to their consumers.”
“What we found with platforms that have attempted to comply is that 95% of people refuse to go through the process,” he said. “They don't want to upload an ID, they don't want to scan their face, especially to access sensitive content.”
Two years later, that’s still the case, Stabile said.
But PornHub’s block on Utah hasn’t stopped people from scrolling. In the weeks following the site’s decision, the number of Utahns downloading virtual private networks skyrocketed. VPNs allowed users to bypass the initial ban by appearing to log on from a different location. It’s a loophole Weiler knew about. Even then, he believes the law has done its job.
“Could a 17-year-old or 16-year-old get a VPN and circumvent this? Yeah, probably happens,” Weiler said. “Could a 7-year-old? Probably not. A 9-year-old? Probably not. An 11-year-old? Probably not.”
While Weiler champions the law as a success, Stabile thinks it was never really about protecting kids.
“What the true goal of these laws was was to make it so difficult for anybody to access this content,” he said.
Additionally, Stabile thinks the law didn’t keep minors from accessing pornography. Rather, he said, the traffic shifted to other sites, some overseas, that don’t have protections for sex workers and don’t care about following a state law.
And while porn sites were quick to react initially, the law applies to more than just the adult film industry. It mandates that all sites verify the age of users if more than a third of the total content meets the definition of "material harmful to minors.”
In Stabile’s view, it’s part of a wider chilling effect. “Material harmful to minors” is the same definition used in Utah to ban certain books from public schools, and he argues it’s being applied liberally to other content.
“We see it used against drag bans. We see it used against booksellers. We see it used to create liability for librarians,” Stabile said.
The Free Speech Coalition challenged Utah’s age verification law when it was first passed. But a district court judge tossed the lawsuit, saying the coalition couldn’t sue the state because of how the law is written to be enforced.
Since the suit was thrown out on a technicality, Weiler expected the coalition to “get its ducks in a row and refile.” It hasn’t done so yet, but Stabile said that could happen in the future. It all hinges on the Supreme Court’s decision after January’s oral arguments over Texas’s age verification law.
The crux of the question in front of the justices is a matter of law on reviewing what is obscene content. Should the standard be the lower rational basis bar, or “strict scrutiny,” which would preserve an adult’s right to access content? Whatever the court decides won’t automatically invalidate the laws already passed in other states.
Even if the Supreme Court rules in the coalition's favor, would PornHub immediately let Utahns back on the site?
“Probably not,” Stabile said. But it would give them the arguments they need for another Utah challenge.
