FSC Files Legal Challenge to Utah Age Verification Law

CHATSWORTH, Calif.—Adult industry trade group the Free Speech Coalition (FSC) announces that as Utah's new age-verification law for online adult content, SB287, today went into effect, the organization concurrently filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Utah seeking to have the law overturned. The complaint asks for declaratory and injunctive relief against the law on account of violations of the 1st and 14th Amendments.  Joining Free Speech Coalition in filing the challenge are Andrea Barrica, founder of the sex education site O.school; journalist, educator and content creator Charyn “Ryn” Pfeuffer; Utah-based erotica writer D.S. Dawson; “John Doe,” a pseudonymous Utah-based attorney; and fan platform JustFor.Fans. The parties are represented by Jeffrey Sandman of Webb Daniel Friedlander LLP, D. Gill Sperlein of the Law Office of D. Gill Sperlein, and Jerome Mooney of Weston, Garrou & Mooney Law Firm on a pro bono basis. “The Utah law restricts adults’ access to legal speech and violates decades of Supreme Court precedent,” FSC executive director Alison Boden says. “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.” The law requires that visitors to adult sites prove that they are over 18 years of age, such as by providing digitized government identification to a service that interacts with a state database. However, the state of Utah does not currently have the capability to verify digital IDs online. The complaint details a litany of constitutional issues, including prohibitions on prior restraint of speech, compelled speech, and violations of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. In 1997, the Supreme Court ruled that age-verification requirements like the one instituted in Utah are unconstitutional so long as other less intrusive methods—such as device-level internet filters—are available. According to FSC, a 2016 Pew Research study found that fewer than 2 in 5 parents use parental controls such as content filters at all, and just 16 percent employ such filters on their children’s phones, despite their wide availability and support on all major devices. “We wrote to Utah during the legislative process raising these issues and asking for a dialogue around workable solutions, but were ignored,” says Boden. “Adult websites don’t want children accessing their content any more than the State of Utah does. But the solutions put forward in SB287 put an unreasonable burden on free expression that we believe are meant to have a chilling effect for all Utahns.” The full complaint can be found here.