In a blog post published Wednesday, the Free Speech Coalition announced a federal judge in Kansas has dismissed two of four lawsuits filed in the state last year. The dismissals come in one action filed against Titan Websites, operator of the adult tube site HentaiCity.com, and another targeting ICF Technology Inc. The lawsuits, originally filed in May 2025, alleged that the sites had failed to comply with Kansas’s age-verification law, rendering the plaintiff’s minor child able to view pornography through the sites.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Holly Teeter dismissed the case against Titan Websites on the grounds that the plaintiff had failed “to state a prima facie basis for the court’s exercise of personal jurisdiction” over the defendant, “based on the prevailing standards and binding law.”
“Plaintiff does not make a prima facie showing that Defendant intended its online content to create effects in Kansas.,” Teeter wrote. “The thrust of Plaintiff’s position is that Defendant knew people from Kansas were accessing its website, that it actively facilitated this access by using a CDN, and that it received money in the form of advertising revenue from Kansas users who accessed its site. Plaintiff argues (among other things) that Defendant knew users from Kansas were accessing its site because Defendant was able to determine what percentage of its overall users came from the state and was ultimately able to shut down traffic to users attempting to access its site from Kansas. Plaintiff also argues that Defendant’s use of a CDN implies that Defendant knew Kansans were using the site. But these things do not show that Defendant purposefully directed its activities at Kansas.”
Teeter observed that the plaintiff’s argument “relies on the Court’s willingness to draw the negative inference that Defendant’s later decision to shut off access to Kansans means Defendant’s earlier failure to do so reflected a purposeful direction of its website at Kansas users.”
“But were this sufficient to demonstrate purposeful direction, then a plaintiff would need only to allege that a defendant who operates a website could have, but failed to, eliminate traffic to a particular forum,” Teeter added. “Embracing such a rule would create an avenue for the sort of ‘universal jurisdiction’ in the internet context that appellate courts have regarded as clearly exceeding the limitations the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause imposes.”
In the FSC’s post announcing the decision, the defendant’s attorney, Jeffrey Sandman of Sandman Law LLC, described Judge Teeter’s opinion as “a thorough, thoughtful, and persuasive decision reminding that personal jurisdiction involves a constitutional dimension that cannot be overwritten by a state legislature.”
“Due Process demands that a defendant without meaningful contacts with a forum state cannot be dragged into court to defend a lawsuit there,” Sandman added. “We are pleased to see these critical constitutional principles vindicated and hope that the Kansas Legislature will rethink its brazen effort to subvert the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”
As the FSC also observed in its post, “the ruling did not address whether the website violated Kansas’s age-verification law – only whether Kansas was the proper forum to decide that question.”
“Yesterday’s ruling provides critical guidance for platforms who are confronted with laws in Kansas and elsewhere,” said Alison Boden, Executive Director of FSC. “While not precedent-setting, nor necessarily applicable in every case, the District Court’s ruling is an important victory against state laws enforced by private rights of action. In the meantime, the threat of litigation is real, and we encourage our members to continue to comply with all applicable laws.”
You can read the FSC’s post about the decision here. You can read the full decision in the Titan Websites case here. The ICF Technology decision can be read here.
Gavel image by Katrin Bolovtsova from Pexels
