Rob’s Notes 25: An Update on US Age Verification
Spoiler: as much as it's about XXX, it's also about a lot more
Adult-oriented content businesses face an expanding maze of age-gating mandates across the United States. In addition to being another example of a patchwork of US state laws in the face of federal inaction, it also portends bigger questions about reduced access or expression amidst the natural limits of trust. Who in fact says they ‘trust’ a random website to handle their ID verification, let alone a sketchy p0rn website?
A June 2025 Supreme Court ruling that upheld Texas’s H.B. 1181 swept away the biggest constitutional cloud hanging over online-porn age checks. Writing for a 6-3 majority, Justice Thomas called the requirement “plainly legitimate,” applied intermediate scrutiny, and framed the burden on adults as merely incidental, thereby giving states a green light to legislate.
Even before the opinion, Louisiana (Act 440), Arkansas (Act 612), Utah (SB 287), Mississippi (SB 2346) and Virginia (SB 1515) had adopted copy-and-paste statutes patterned on Louisiana’s 2023 pioneer law. Industry tallies now count roughly 24 states with pornography-site age-verification rules on their books, and bills are queued up in Colorado, Kansas, Missouri and several others for the 2025-26 sessions.
Most of these laws share the same skeleton. Any site where about one-third of content is “harmful to minors” must deploy a “commercially reasonable” gate (usually a government-ID scan, credit-card token or third-party credential) and faces steep liability if it slips. Texas authorizes civil fines up to $10,000 per day; Virginia lets parents sue directly; Louisiana and Arkansas bar platforms from storing raw ID data once access is granted.
Compliance is uneven. Pornhub and several other large tube sites now geo-block much of the South rather than shoulder liability, while many smaller or overseas operators simply ignore the rules. A July 2025 review found that most top porn sites still loaded freely in Virginia despite its year-old law, and the state now leads the nation in Google searches for VPNs.
Privacy objections are prompting legislative tweaks. Colorado’s SB 25-201, for example, would force every covered site to offer at least one non-ID-based option (such as a tokenized $1 card charge verified by a zero-knowledge proof - harkening back to early days of credit-card based ‘age proof’ for porn access, minus the ZKP of course) explicitly to avoid forcing adults to surrender sensitive documents. Similar data-minimization clauses have surfaced in Missouri and South Carolina drafts and are gaining traction as a political compromise.
The legal fight is far from over
Trade groups like NetChoice continue to sue, arguing that the growing patchwork violates the First Amendment and the dormant Commerce Clause; Mississippi’s 2024 law, for instance, is already tied up in federal court. Yet after the Texas ruling, challengers must now show less-restrictive alternatives on a state-by-state basis—a tall order.