Porn, Sex-Toy Industry Sue to Block Montana Age-Verification Law

A coalition of sex-related businesses, educators, and writers sued to block the Montana attorney general from enforcing a state law requiring websites offering sexual content to verify users’ ages.

Montana’s Age Verification Act places liability for damages on commercial entities that knowingly distribute “material harmful to minors” without using reasonable methods to verify the ages of individuals seeking the content.

The complaint, filed Tuesday in US District Court for the District of Montana, argues that the law, which went into effect in January, violates by the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of Montanans in several respects. The lawsuit, spearheaded by adult-industry trade group Free Speech Coalition Inc., counts sex-toy shop Adam and Eve and its Montana franchisees as co-plaintiffs.

It’s the latest lawsuit challenging similar state laws around the country. Free Speech Coalition won an initial stay of a similar Texas law, but an appeals court lifted the injunction. The US Supreme Court rejected an April challenge by the group to stop enforcement of the law. Free Speech Coalition lost bids to block similar laws in Utah and Louisiana. It’s still appealing its loss in Utah, but the Fifth Circuit in April granted its motion to dismiss its appeal of the Louisiana case.

The groups argue Montana’s act violates the First Amendment by imposing “a content-based burden on protected speech” yet fails to tailor the restrictions only to accomplish “its stated purpose of protecting minors from materials they may easily obtain from other sources and via other means.” The age-verification process also operates as a “presumptively unconstitutional prior restraint on speech” by requiring approval to access protected speech, according to the complaint.

The statute also violates the Fourteenth Amendment because it is “impermissibly vague,” violating due process and intruding on privacy rights without specifically furthering government’s interest, the groups wrote.

Free Speech Coalition argues that the law would harm its hundreds of member-businesses “involved in the production, distribution, sale, and presentation of constitutionally-protected and non-obscene materials that are disseminated to consenting adults via the internet.”

The groups are seeking to permanently ban Attorney General Austin Knudsen from enforcing the act and a judge’s declaration that the act unconstitutional and therefore void.

The office of the Attorney General for Montana did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Other co-plaintiffs include sexual-education platform Deep Connection Technologies Inc., erotic audiovisual content platform JFF Publications LLC., sex and relationship columnist Charyn Pfeuffer, Montana psychotherapist Anna Louise Peterson, and author Lynsey Griswold.

PHE Inc. and Convergence Holdings Inc. own Adam and Eve and its Montana franchisees respectively.

The plantiffs are represented by Boone Karlberg, Webb Daniel Freidlander LLP, and D. Gill Sperlein.

The case is Free Speech Coalition, Inc. et al v. Knudsen, D. Mont., No. 9:24-cv-00067, complaint filed 5/14/24.