TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas is poised to require pornographic websites to verify that visitors are adults, a move that Texas and a handful of other states would follow despite concerns about privacy and how broadly the law could be applied.
The Republican-controlled Kansas Legislature passed the proposal Tuesday and sent it to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly. The House voted 92-31 in favor and the Senate passed it unanimously last month. Kelly hasn’t announced her plans yet, but she typically signs bills with bipartisan support, and her supporters still have enough votes to override a veto.
At least eight states have passed age verification laws since 2022 — Texas, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Utah and Virginia, and lawmakers have introduced proposals in more than two dozen other states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures and an analysis of The Associated Press from data from the Plural bill tracking service.
Weeks ago, a federal appeals court upheld the Texas age verification requirement as constitutional and the Oklahoma House sent a similar measure to the Senate.
Proponents claim they are protecting children from widespread pornography on the Internet. Oklahoma Rep. Toni Hasenbeck, a sponsor of the legislation, said pornography is dramatically more available now than if “there were maybe a sixth-grade boy who found a Playboy magazine in a ditch somewhere.”
“What is common in our society is a child being alone with his digital device in his bedroom,” said Hasenbeck, a Republican who represents a rural district in southwestern Oklahoma.
In Kansas, some critics questioned whether the measure would violate free speech and press rights guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Last year, that issue was raised in a federal lawsuit over the Texas law from the Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for the adult entertainment industry.
A three-judge panel of the conservative, New Orleans-based Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Texas’ age verification requirement did not violate the First Amendment. The judges concluded that such a law can remain in force as long as a state has a rational basis for it and states have a legitimate interest in blocking minors’ access to pornography.
The Kansas bill would make it a violation of the state’s consumer protection laws for a website to fail to verify that a visitor from Kansas is 18 years old if the website contains material that is “harmful to minors.” The attorney general can then go to court and seek a fine of up to $10,000 for each violation. Parents can also seek damages of at least $50,000.
Under existing Kansas criminal law, material is harmful to minors if it involves “nudity, sexual conduct, sexual arousal, or sadomasochistic abuse.”
But critics of the bill, mostly Democrats, argued that the law could be interpreted so broadly that LGBTQ+ teens would not have access to information about sexual orientation or gender identity because the legal definition of sexual conduct includes acts of “homosexuality.” That means “being who we are” is defined as harmful to minors, said Rep. Brandon Woodard, who is gay and a Democrat from the Kansas City area.
Woodard also said opponents don’t understand “how technology works.” He said people can get around an age verification requirement by accessing pornography through the dark web or unregulated social media sites.
Other lawmakers questioned whether the state could prevent websites outside of Kansas from keeping people’s personal information.
“The information used to verify an individual’s age could fall into the hands of entities that could use it for fraudulent purposes,” said southeastern Kansas Rep. Ken Collins, one of two Republicans who voted against the bill.
Yet even critics recognized that parents and other voters have a strong interest in keeping minors from viewing pornography. Another Republican from southeastern Kansas, Chuck Smith, chided the House for not passing the bill unanimously, as the Senate did.
“Children must be protected,” he said. “Everyone here knows what pornography is – everyone.”
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Murphy reported from Oklahoma City.