Senate signs off on bill to punish porn websites that don’t verify user’s age

The Louisiana Senate gave unanimous final passage Sunday to a bill that would let the state attorney general pursue civil penalties against companies that do not comply with a law that requires pornography websites to verify the age of its users. 

House Bill 77, sponsored by Rep. Laurie Schlegel, R-Metairie, builds on a law that went into effect earlier this year that requires pornography websites to verify the ages of its users. The law, which Schlegel also authored, requires websites made up of at least one-third “material harmful to minors” use certain age verification measures. 

Schlegel, a sex addiction therapist, said she filed the bill to ensure enforcement of the existing law to better protect minors, who she views as susceptible to harm from pornography. 

Throughout the process, several lawmakers raised concerns that the bill’s language is overly broad and might give the attorney general room for personal interpretation. 

When the bill came up in the House Commerce Committee in April, Schlegel pushed back on the idea that the language is overly broad, pointing to portions of her bill that incorporate the Miller Test, the primary tool used to gauge what is obscenity. 

The Miller Test asks three questions: 

• Would the average person applying contemporary community standards find the work, taken as a whole, is excessively sexual in nature?, 
• Does  the work depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law? 
• Does the work, taken as a whole, lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value?

Nearly identical language appears in Schlegel’s proposal. 

Despite Schlegel’s steps to incorporate these standards, free speech advocates are concerned the bill would chill constitutionally protected speech. 

Chris Kaiser, advocacy director of the Louisiana ACLU, said his primary worry is that the bill builds on Schlegel’s 2022 law, which his organization also had strong concerns about. 

“The First Amendment protects adults’ right to access protected speech, including pornography, in the privacy of their own homes,” Kaiser said in an interview earlier this year. “By requiring adults to provide age verification… it’s burdening their fundamental rights to free speech.” 

Kaiser also said the penalties laid out in Schlegel’s new proposal, which allow for an up to $5,000 per day fine for companies that violate the law, further stifle protected speech. 

On the House floor, Schlegel argued the age verification methods websites use take less than a minute, which she does not believe to be burdensome. 

After Schlegel’s 2022 law went into effect, several major pornography websites have opted to require Louisiana users to log in to their websites with LA Wallet, a cellphone application that can carry a state-issued identification card. 

Lobbyists representing LA Wallet, a private company contracted by the state, supported the bill. The company saw a large spike in users when Schlegel’s law went into effect earlier this year. 

The bill will next go to the governor’s desk for approval.