Adult filmmakers ask judge to delay Utah law requiring porn sites verify user ages

Attorneys representing adult entertainers, erotica authors and sex educators on Wednesday asked a judge to put on hold a Utah law requiring porn and other adult websites verify user ages.

Attorneys representing adult entertainers, erotica authors and sex educators on Wednesday asked a judge to put on hold a Utah law requiring porn and other adult websites verify user ages.

The Free Speech Coalition and its co-plaintiffs argued the new state law violates their clients' First Amendment rights and intrudes on the privacy of individuals who want to view sexually explicit materials. Their request to put the law under injunction comes less than a month after Utah's age verification law took effect and prompted them to file a lawsuit.

"The Act is a poorly crafted solution to a poorly articulated problem, and the public interest is not advanced by the endurance of an overly restrictive, vague, and overbroad statute that imperils the rights of Utahns to provide and receive constitutionally-protected material over the internet," they argued in a request to delay implementing the law that was filed in federal court on Wednesday.

Free Speech Coalition attorney Gill Sperlein said the hold was needed because the First Amendment and financial harms the law inflicted on publishers of websites subject to the law were well underway and would continue over the course of the two or three years it takes to resolve the case. The state now has time to file a response before the judge makes a decision.

The request to delay the law echoes the Free Speech Coalition's original complaint because requests for injunctions are evaluated in part on parties' chances to succeed in their lawsuits. They argued that the law unconstitutionally burdens website operators, content creators and anyone who peruses certain corners of the internet.

Those groups, the request to put the law on hold said, incur "constitutional injury every day the Act remains in effect."

"The State of Utah, meanwhile, has no legitimate interest in the enforcement of a patently unconstitutional statute that has been in effect for just a few weeks," it adds.