The Free Speech Coalition (FSC) announced Wednesday that it has filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Utah to challenge the state’s recently-enacted “age verification” law. Included in the complaint is a request for declaratory and injunctive relief against the law, which the FSC says is a violation of both the 1st and 14th Amendments.
The FSC is the trade organization for the adult entertainment industry.
In its challenge, the Free Speech Coalition is not standing alone. A number of affected parties have joined the challenge, including Andrea Barrica, founder of the sex education site O.school; journalist, educator, and content creator Charyn “Ryn” Pfeuffer; Utah-based erotica writer D.S. Dawson; “John Doe,” a pseudonymous Utah-based attorney; and fan platform JustFor.Fans.
Lawyers working on the challenge include Jeffrey Sandman of Webb Daniel Friedlander LLP, D. Gill Sperlein of the Law Office of D. Gill Sperlein, and Jerome Mooney of Weston, Garrou & Mooney Law Firm. All of these lawyers are working on a pro bono basis.
“The Utah law restricts adults’ access to legal speech and violates decades of Supreme Court precedent,” said Alison Boden, Executive Director of Free Speech Coalition. “We are fighting not only for the rights of our members and the larger adult entertainment community, but for the right of all Americans to access constitutionally-protected expression in the privacy of their own home.”
The Utah law requires adult site visitors to provide proof that they are at least 18 years old, but provides only vague descriptions of how this might be accomplished in a way that satisfies compliance. It mentions “digitized government identification” that somehow interacts with a state database as one possible method, however unlike Louisiana, the state of Utah does not currently provide any service that could verify digital IDs online.
“The complaint details a litany of constitutional issues, including prohibitions on prior restraint of speech, compelled speech, and violations of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act,” explained the FSC in a press release announcing the lawsuit. “In 1997, the Supreme Court ruled that age-verification requirements like the one instituted in Utah are unconstitutional so long as other less intrusive methods — such as device-level internet filters — are available.”
The FSC points to device-level filtering as a less restrictive and more effective path that parents can use to keep adult content away from children.
“We wrote to Utah during the legislative process raising these issues and asking for a dialogue around workable solutions, but were ignored,” said Boden. “Adult websites don’t want children accessing their content any more than the State of Utah does. But the solutions put forward in SB287 put an unreasonable burden on free expression that we believe are meant to have a chilling effect for all Utahns.”
The full complaint can be found on the FSC’s website.
The FSC also took to Twitter today to spread awareness of the challenge.
“Free Speech Coalition has just filed suit in federal court to block Utah’s unconstitutional age-verification law,” the organization tweeted. “We will, as always, fight for the members of our community. Our First Amendment rights are not up for debate!”
“Thanks to all our members, our allies and those who continue to support the organization,” it added. “We can not do it without you. We will fight, and we will win.”
