Pornhub has blocked its site in Texas amid a legal battle over a state law that requires the company to verify the age of users, according to Variety.
In a new message to Texas residents displayed Thursday, Pornhub explained that it was disabling site access in order to comply with the law.
"As you may know, your elected officials in Texas are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website," the company said. "Not only does this impinge on the rights of adults to access protected speech, it fails strict scrutiny by employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas's stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors.
"Until the real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Texas," it continued. "In doing so, we are complying with the law, as we always do, but hope that governments around the world will implement laws that actually protect the safety and security of users."
The announcement from Pornhub follows a lawsuit Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed last month against parent company Aylo for allegedly violating the state's recently enacted age verification law.
Paxton, a Republican, is seeking to have Aylo pay up to $1.6 million from mid-September to the filing date of the lawsuit, plus an additional $10,000 each day since filing.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled earlier this month that age verification requirements are constitutional, partially vacating the injunction Pornhub and other organizations obtained from a district court.
In a statement on March 8, Paxton called the ruling an "important victory."
The Texas age verification law was passed by the state Legislature and signed by Gov. Greg Abbott last year. It requires companies that distribute sexual material that is potentially harmful to minors to confirm that platform users are 18 years or older, using government-issued identification or public or private data.
"This is not the end," Alex Kekesi, vice president of brand and community at Aylo, told Variety in a statement. "We are reviewing options and consulting with our legal team ... We will continue to fight for our industry and the performers that legally earn a living, and we will continue to appeal through all available judicial recourse to recognize that this law is unconstitutional."
Aylo "has publicly supported age verification of users for years, but we believe that any law to this effect must ensure minors do not access content intended for adults and preserve user safety and privacy," Kekesi continued. "We believe that the real solution for protecting minors and adults alike is to verify users' ages at the point of access — the users' devices — and to deny or permit access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that verification."
Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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