HOUSTON — Some pornography companies, including Pornhub, recently failed in their attempt to block a new Texas law from going into effect.
On Thursday, Pornub completely disabled website access for users in Texas to comply with HB 1181, which "requires purveyors of obscene materials online to institute reasonable age-verification measures to safeguard children from pornography," according to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's Office.
The companies initially got an injunction from a district court, but Paxton appealed the injunction, allowing the law to be enforced, his office said.
Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit partially vacated the injunction and ruled that the age requirements were constitutional and didn't violate the First Amendment.
"Applying rational-basis review, the age-verification requirement is rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in preventing minors’ access to pornography," the court explains. "Therefore, the age-verification requirement does not violate the First Amendment."
On Thursday, Pornhub put up a landing page for users in Texas explaining why they disabled access.
"As you may know, your elected officials in Texas are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website," the message on Pornhub.com said.
The message said the company believes the law is an impingement "on the rights of adults to access protected speech."
It went on to say, "We call on all adult sites to comply with the law. Until the real solution if offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Texas. 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."
HB 1181 applies to minors under 18 and entities knowingly publishing or distributing material on a website, including social media platforms, of which more than one-third is "sexual material harmful to minors."
The bill was signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott last June. It was set to take effect on Sept. 1 but it had been held up until recently. Another part of the bill that's still being blocked due to litigation is the requirement for porn websites to show a health warning on their landing page.
Paxton issued this statement:
"PornHub has now disabled its website in Texas. Sites like PornHub are on the run because Texas has a law that aims to prevent them from showing harmful, obscene material to children. We recently secured a major victory against PornHub and other sites that sought to block this law from taking effect. In Texas, companies cannot get away with showing porn to children. If they don’t want to comply, good riddance."