A Kansas mom is suing several porn sites for violating the state's new age-verification law.
Age-verification laws vary, but they typically require some type of proof of age to enter an explicit site — beyond a "yes or no" pop-up, which used the honor system — such as a government ID or facial recognition scan. Since 2022, nearly a third of the states in the U.S. have enacted age verification on porn sites.
Kansas's law requires any site with over 25 percent of its content deemed "harmful to minors" (as defined in Kansas, nudity and other sexual content) to age-verify site visitors with a commercially available database or "any other commercially reasonable method of age and identity verification." The phrase "harmful to minors" comes from the 1968 Supreme Court case Ginsberg v. New York, which concluded that content that isn't obscene (and is therefore protected by the First Amendment) can still be "harmful to minors."
If someone can access an explicit site in Kansas without age verification, the law states that they can report it to the attorney general, who may seek a monetary penalty from the commercial entity (the website). A parent or guardian can bring a private action against the commercial entity, as well.
By requiring a more rigorous age-verification system, lawmakers and those advocating for these laws are hoping to stop minors from viewing online porn. But a recent study on age verification suggests that it doesn't work for its intended purpose. One reason is that some sites aren't complying, which is the case here.
According to several complaints filed on May 12 against adult sites Chaturbate.com, Jerkmate.com, Techpump (owner of Superporn.com), and Titan Websites (owner of Hentaicity.com), the mother found her 14-year-old child called "Q.R." on all these sites after Kansas enacted its age-verification law in July 2024.
"On August 12, 2024, Q.R. found Jane Doe’s [friend of mother's] old laptop in her closet. She had stored the device there a couple of years ago after purchasing a new laptop and had since forgotten about it. Unfortunately for Q.R., it was still in working condition," the complaints read.
"Q.R., using his mother’s old laptop, had unfettered access to the internet and began searching for hardcore pornography."
Each of the four complaints details the number of instances and the dates in which the teen accessed the site. They go on to say that the 14-year-old has suffered "pain, suffering, disability, disfigurement, and mental anguish; psychological injury; past and future love of enjoyment and pleasure of living; and past and future expenses of necessary medical care and treatment."
Anti-porn group National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) joined the lawsuits representing the plaintiff. NCOSE advocates for age-verification laws and calls them "vital" to protecting children.
"Kansas law requires pornography companies to implement reasonable age-verification methods, and the companies named in these lawsuits failed to do so, resulting in Q.R.'s access to material that is harmful to minors," NCOSE senior vice president and director of its law center, Dani Pinter, said in the group's press release.
The press release states that porn is harmful to children, but the preliminary study out of NYU suggests that age verification doesn't work to stop minors from accessing porn. In addition to a lack of compliance, it's also possible that minors can use VPNs to pretend to be in a location outside the jurisdiction. Free speech advocates Mashable has spoken to previously warn that age verification can also degrade internet security and privacy. And according to sexual freedom non-profit the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, minors aren't accessing porn at unprecedented levels anyway.
These new laws are also supported by conservatives seeking to ban porn altogether. Project 2025, the far-right policy blueprint for Trump's second term, calls for a ban on pornography and the imprisonment of its creators. One of the writers of Project 2025, Russell Vought, was caught on a secret recording last year calling age verification the "backdoor" banning of porn. (Vought is now director of the Office of Management and Budget.)
Unlike sites like Chaturbate, Pornhub has blocked itself from Kansas and other states, saying that age-verification laws are a burden. In the recording, Vought said when these laws pass, "The porn company then says, 'We're not going to do business in your state.' Which of course is entirely what we were after, right?"
This slew of complaints follows a January lawsuit Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach filed against an owner of 13 porn sites, claiming it also violated the state's age-verification law.
The same month, the Supreme Court heard Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, a case about the constitutionality of Texas's age-verification law. The decision will likely come next month.
