North Carolina Joins the Age-Verification Crowd with “PAVE Act”

According to WRAL News, Republican state senators added the age-verification requirement, titled the “Pornography Age Verification Enforcement” (PAVE) Act, to House Bill 8, late in the process of debating HB 8.

Sen. Amy Galey, who proposed the amendment to HB 8, noted that seven other states have enacted similar laws, claiming that traffic to adult websites from Louisiana dropped 80% after the law passed there.

“I think this is an incredibly important bill to protect our children,” Galey said, according to WRAL.

The text of North Carolina’s new PAVE Act is very similar to that of the Louisiana bill, which appears to have served as a model for other states to follow.

Under the PAVE Act, any “commercial entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors on the internet from a website that contains a substantial portion of such material shall, through use of a commercially available database that is regularly used by businesses or governmental entities for the purpose of age and identity verification, or another commercially reasonable method of age and identity verification, verify the age of the individuals attempting to access the material.”

As with similar laws passed or under consideration in other states, North Carolina’s PAVE Act forbids data retention by the third parties which perform the required age verification and creates a private right of action for citizens in the state to sue noncompliant websites.

“Any commercial entity, or third party that performs the required age verification on behalf of the commercial entity, shall be subject to civil liability for any violation of this section,” the Act states. “A civil action may be brought against any commercial entity, or third party that performs the required age verification on behalf of the commercial entity, that violates this section by any of the following: (1) A parent or guardian whose minor was allowed access to the material; (2) Any person whose identifying information is retained in violation of this section.”

As with similar bills in other states, North Carolina’s PAVE Act may prove difficult to challenge in court, as no government official is charged with enforcing the Act, making it hard for potential plaintiffs to establish standing to sue – the issue which derailed the Free Speech Coalition’s challenge to a similar provision in Utah.

The PAVE Act now awaits the signature (or veto, although that seems unlikely, given the bipartisan popularity of the bill in the Assembly) of North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper.

Photo of Raleigh, North Carolina by Curtis Adams from Pexels