Federal Judge Blocks Indiana Age Verification Law

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An Indiana Law that would impose age verification on porn sites was blocked by a federal judge.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Young issued a preliminary injunction Friday blocking the law that was set to go into effect Monday.

“Indiana’s age verification requirements are likely unconstitutional,” he said. “If Indiana were truly interested in protecting minors from seeing adult content, it would have imposed age verification requirements wherever those images are found, not by selectively determining which websites displaying adult content present the most danger. In sum, the Act does not sufficiently advance the government’s interests in protecting minors from harmful obscene speech because minors can easily circumvent the law using technology or searching for websites not covered by the Act.”

The law, SEA 17, said sites on which at least one-third of their images and videos are “material harmful to minors” must verify their customers’ ages with a mobile driver’s license or government ID — which Indiana doesn’t provide — or through a third-party age verification service.

Pornhub and their trade association, the Free Speech Coalition, sued the state earlier this month.

Young said there are better ways to protect minors from seeing adult content.

“If Indiana were truly interested in protecting minors from seeing adult content, it would have imposed age verification requirements wherever those images are found, not by selectively determining which websites displaying adult content present the most danger.”

Young said a more effective solution would be filtering and blocking technology, which the adult site suggested in their lawsuit.