Texas AG Ken Paxton sues porn companies for violating state's age verification law
The attorney general of Texas has filed lawsuits against two companies that operate pornography websites as part of an effort to prevent minors from accessing sexually explicit material online.
In a statement published Friday, the office of Texas’ Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the filing of lawsuits against Multi Media, LLC and Hammy Media. The Attorney General’s office identified both organizations as “major pornography companies that operate sites such as ‘Chaturbate’ and ‘xHamster,’” alleging that the defendants in the lawsuits have violated HB 1181, a state law requiring age verification measures for using pornography websites.
The state law requires companies to verify that users seeking access to pornographic material online are at least 18 years old.
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The complaints against both Multi Media, LLC and Hammy Media were filed in the District Court of Travis County last Tuesday. They asked a judge to issue an order finding that the companies are violating state law and enjoining them from “online publication or distribution of sexual material harmful to minors without implementing reasonable age verification methods.”
Additionally, the lawsuits seek to impose civil penalties of $10,000 per day on both companies for each of the days they were found to have violated state law. The civil penalties sought against Multi Media, LLC amount to $1,780,000, while the fines requested from Hammy Media add up to $1,670,000 as of the day of the lawsuit’s filing. The complaint asks for $10,000 per day for each additional day the companies operate pornography websites without age verification measures.
As noted by Paxton, Multi Media, LLC and Hammy Media are not the only porn website operators that have found themselves subject to lawsuits in Texas. Commenting on the status of other litigation related to pornography websites over age verification requirements, Paxton stated, “PornHub has now disabled its website in Texas.”
“Sites like PornHub are on the run because Texas has a law that aims to prevent them from showing harmful, obscene material to children,” he added. “In Texas, companies cannot get away with showing porn to children. If they don’t want to comply, they should leave Texas.”
Paxton’s office explained that PornHub has done just that in response to a lawsuit filed by the Texas Attorney General’s Office. PornHub has taken a similar course of action in other states with age verification laws by blocking access to the site altogether.
In addition to detailing his latest round of lawsuits, Paxton vowed to “aggressively enforce HB 1181.” He warned that “all pornography companies lacking proper age verification safeguards on their sites should consider themselves on notice, because they’re violating Texas law.”
Texas is not the only state to implement age verification requirements for pornography websites in recent years. The National Decency Coalition, which describes itself as a “team of volunteers from around the U.S. that unite in a common purpose to combat pervasive harms against children,” has identified nine other states with similar legislation on the books: Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Utah and Virginia.
While Texas’ age verification law found itself subject to a lawsuit following its passage, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has determined that the requirement does not violate the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution despite assertions to the contrary.
However, a separate provision in the law requiring porn websites to display warnings from the Texas Department of Health and Human Services declaring that “pornography is potentially biologically addictive, is proven to harm human brain development, desensitizes brain reward circuits, increases conditioned responses, and weakens brain function” remains on hold after a judge at the U.S. District Court level found it unconstitutional.
Another aspect of the state law requiring adult websites to post disclaimers insisting that porn is “associated with low self-esteem and body image, eating disorders, impaired brain development, and other emotional and mental illnesses” is also on hold, as is the section of the measure characterizing explicit content as a source of increased “demand for prostitution, child exploitation, and child pornography.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
