Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed lawsuits against two pornographic content companies for allegedly violating a state law that requires age verification to protect children from accessing harmful or obscene material, the Office of the Attorney General announced Thursday.
The pair of separate lawsuits named Multi Media LLC and Hammy Media as the defendants, which operate pornographic websites in the state of Texas. In late February, Mr. Paxton filed a similar lawsuit against another pornography website.
“I will continue to aggressively enforce HB 1181. All pornography companies lacking proper age verification safeguards on their sites should consider themselves on notice because they’re violating Texas law,” Mr. Paxton said in a statement.
The filings accuse the companies of publishing “sexually explicit material online that is accessible and harmful to Texas children and adolescents,” according to court documents.
Enforcing the Law
In late February this year, Mr. Paxton filed a lawsuit against Aylo Global Entertainment, parent company of pornographic website PornHub, accusing the company of not taking appropriate steps to verify the user’s age before gaining access to its explicit website. The company also operates other pornographic websites, according to the complaint.The Montreal, Canada-based company, which has operated since 2004, was one of the most visited pornographic websites in Texas and globally until recently.
The company has since blocked its website in the state.
“PornHub has now disabled its website in Texas,” Mr. Paxton wrote on social media on March 14. “Sites like PornHub are on the run because Texas has a law that aims to prevent them from showing harmful, obscene material to children. We recently secured a major victory against PornHub and other sites that sought to block this law from taking effect. In Texas, companies cannot get away with showing porn to children. If they don’t want to comply, good riddance.”
Companies that fail to comply with the age verification requirement are subject to a fine of $10,000 for each day they operate in violation and $10,000 for each time the entity retains identifying information, according to the law.
A company could also face an additional fine of up to $250,000 “if one or more minors accesses sexual material harmful to minors.”
The law also requires pornographic websites to include multiple health warnings using a 14-point or larger font on their landing page.
“TEXAS HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES WARNING: pornography is potentially biologically addictive, is proven to harm human brain development, desensitizes brain reward circuits, increases conditioned responses, and weakens brain function,” reads one of the required warnings.
Another notice warns that pornography is “associated with low self-esteem and body image, eating disorders, and other emotional and mental illnesses.”
Legal Challenges
The Free Speech Coalition, an association of adult entertainment industries and co-plaintiff to Aylo, challenged HB 1181 before it was set to take effect. They claimed the legislation violated the First Amendment.The plaintiffs argue that age-verification laws, in effect, censor cultural resources such as LGBT literature, sexual expression in art, and sex education materials, among others.
PornHub and others have come under fire after sexual abuse victims came forward, accusing the sites of profiting from videos of their abuse.
In late August, a district judge blocked the measure from taking effect, but agreed that the state had a “legitimate” goal in protecting children from exposure to explicit materials online.
The state of Texas appealed the order, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the district court’s injunction in November 2023, allowing the state to enforce the law.
The decision is expected to be appealed.
Aylo has failed in attempts to challenge similar laws passed in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Utah.
