Utah Warning Label Law Opens Door to Citizen Anti-Porn Lawsuits

Utah’s new law requiring porn to come with a “warning label” went on the books in that state last week, as AVN.com reported. While the bill that passed the state legislature was considerably watered down from its original version, now requiring the label only on “obscene” material rather than on any content containing nudity, the adult industry advocacy group Free Speech Coalition warned that the law was still likely to open the door to an avalanche of lawsuits against porn producers and sites. Apparently, the law's backers agree. Quoted on One News Now—a site that describes itself as offering “your latest news from a Christian perspective”—Liberty Counsel founder Mat Staver praised the new law. "Certainly anybody can bring a lawsuit—including private citizens—if the label is not there," Staver, who has headed the nonprofit, evangelical Christian law firm for 30 years, told the site. "The consumer needs to know [of the potential for harm]—and I think this is a consumer protection law in Utah.” The version of the warning label bill that automatically became law when Utah Governor Gary Herbert simply let the signing deadline lapse targets only “obscene” material, which in theory would exempt the majority of online, mainstream porn.  But because, as the FSC statement noted, “there is no established legal definition for obscenity,” though the Supreme Court's decision in Miller v. California still governs the material that would come before courts, while any citizen could in fact sue a porn site or producer for such, “each case would have to be worked out through a lengthy and expensive legal process." According to an analysis by The Salt Lake Tribune, a porn producer could successfully defend against the accusation of “obscenity” by showing that it has included the required warning label on the bulk of its content. In other words, even though the watered-down version of the law requires only “obscene” material to include the warning, the fact that anyone can charge “obscenity” and file a lawsuit means that, to avoid costly litigation, porn producers would need to include the warning label. “The chilling effect on legal speech would be substantial,” the FSC statement read. Photo By onaeg news agency / Wikimedia Commons