Christian Smith
(NewsNation) – In a rare display of ideological cooperation between left and right, the California State Assembly approved a bill requiring adult websites to verify the age of their visitors.
If the Senate agrees and the governor signs the bill, California would join a growing list of mostly conservative states with similar laws on the books.
Leading the push for the bill: Republican Juan Alanis, a former county sheriff’s sergeant, and Democrat Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, a women’s rights advocate.
“This bill is simply intended to protect children – and harmful exposure to increasingly available and increasingly violent online sexual material,” Alanis told her colleagues.
“It’s a matter of our children’s safety. It’s about making sure they learn healthy behaviors,” Bauer-Kahan said.
A total of 80 members of the Assembly voted in favor of the project and none voted “no”. But 15 were listed as non-voters.
The California measure would require adult websites to take “reasonable steps” to verify whether a user is 18 or older. It would also require that data collection ensures user anonymity and does not create a record of the user’s online activity.
At least eight states have enacted age verification laws since 2022 — Texas, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Utah and Virginia, and lawmakers have introduced proposals in more than 20 other states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures and an Associated Press analysis of data from the account tracking service Plural.
The parent company of one of the largest adult websites, Pornhub, has closed access to its sites in these states. Pornhub called the Texas law “ineffective, haphazard and dangerous” in a statement.
Since then, online searches for “Texas VPN” have soared, according to new data from SlashGear. VPNs, or virtual private networks, allow users to disguise their locations online.
Laws in some states are suspended pending legal appeals. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the Texas law. Also last month, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed an age verification bill.
The European Union has an age verification law in place, along with the technology to enact it.
“They found a way to verify his age on his phone,” Bauer-Kahan said. “A token is sent to the site without your personally identifiable information, and then you, if you are an adult, can access legal pornography.”
