Beshear signs bill requiring age verification for porn website users in Kentucky

Digital sites hosting content deemed “harmful to minors” — a term that applies to pornography producers and distributors — will soon be required to verify Kentucky users’ ages thanks to a bill signed into law by Gov. Andy Beshear.

House Bill 278 began as a noncontroversial child protection bill to toughen laws around sex crimes, child sexual abuse and trafficking, that sailed through the House of Representatives with a unanimous vote in February.

But amid the bill-passing frenzy of the second-to-last night before the 10-day veto recess began in late March, the Senate gave its approval to a floor amendment from Sen. Gex Williams, R-Verona, adding several pages language about the “corroding influence” of porn and requirements for age verification.

Much of the language in Williams’ amendment mirrored that of two bills filed earlier during the General Assembly — House Bill 241 from Rep. Shane Baker, R-Somerset, and Senate Bill 276 from Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield — that failed to advance.

Tichenor withdrew her bill in mid-March, and Baker’s never got a committee assignment.

Sen. Whitney Westerfield, R-Fruit Hill, said on the Senate floor that Williams’ change raised concerns about the First Amendment and consumer privacy.

“I want to get to the exact same place that the sponsor ... wants to get to, but this is not constitutionally or privacy policy sound, and I can’t support it.”

The Senate went on to unanimously pass the bill with Williams’ amendment attached on March 27, and the House agreed with the changes the next day.

Beshear signed the bill in law Friday.

The bill does not contain an emergency clause, so it will go into effect 90 days after the General Assembly adjourns on April 15, giving it a mid-July start date.

Sign up for our Bluegrass Politics Newsletter

A must-read newsletter for political junkies across the Bluegrass State with reporting and analysis from the Lexington Herald-Leader. Never miss a story! Sign up for our Bluegrass Politics newsletter to connect with our reporting team and get behind-the-scenes insights, plus previews of the biggest stories.

How do porn companies react?

In other states, major porn websites have chosen to block access to users rather than comply with these laws, citing risks to user privacy and safety.

Pornhub announced last summer it was blocking access to users in Mississippi and Virginia for that reason.

Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub, told the Herald-Leader it supports verifying user ages for years, but “any law to this effect must preserve user safety and privacy.”

“Unfortunately, the way many jurisdictions worldwide have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard and dangerous,” Aylo said in a statement. “Any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information is putting user safety in jeopardy.”

Louisiana implemented a similar law in 2023. Since it took effect, Pornhub traffic has fallen by about 80% as it complied with the law, the Aylo statement said.

“These people did not stop looking for porn,” Aylo said. “They just migrated to darker corners of the internet that don’t ask users to verify age, that don’t follow the law, that don’t take user safety seriously and that often don’t even moderate content.

“In practice, the laws have just made the internet more dangerous for adults and children.”

Aylo argues the best way to verify user ages is on the device.

“The technology to accomplish this exists today,” the company wrote.

“What is required is the political and social will to make it happen. We are eager to be part of this solution and are happy to collaborate with government, civil society and tech partners to arrive at an effective device-based age verification solution.”

The Free Speech Coalition, the trade association for the adult industry, has previously told the Herald-Leader bills like this “effectively remove anonymity from the internet and expose millions of everyday citizens to the threat of hacking, identity theft and government surveillance.”

“There are more effective solutions that don’t require government censorship or put internet users at risk,” Mike Stabile, director of public affairs for the coalition, wrote in an email to the Herald-Leader.

What does the bill require?

Age verification as mandated by the bill is not as simple as the user checking a box to say they’re 18 or older.

Sites would need to collect proof of the user’s age through one of the approved list of documents outlined in the bill, including state or federal government-issued IDs, or “commercially reasonable method of identification that relies on public or private transactional data.”

The law will apply to websites that “create, host, or make available content that meets the definition of matter harmful to minors” if more than one-third of the material on the site is deemed harmful.

That “harmful” content includes matter “designed to appeal to, or pander to, the prurient interest.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has held content appealing to prurient interest is “material having a tendency to excite lustful thoughts,” and defined it as “a shameful or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion.”

HB 278 lists a number of body parts and sex acts that it deems as harmful if found to be lacking in “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.”

The law will also allow parents of guardians of Kentucky minors who access this content to sue for $10,000 in damages for each violation, as well as attorneys’ fees and court costs.

Additionally, websites that retain users’ identifying information for more than 24 hours after verifying their ages are liable for damages of $1,000 per day, in addition to court costs and attorneys’ fees.