The Weird Legal Posture Of Bounty Laws Strikes Again: Porn Age Verification Lawsuit In Louisiana Dismissed
A federal district judge in Louisiana dismissed a lawsuitchallenging the state's mandatory age verification statute in order to access adult content on the internet. The lawsuit was brought by the Free Speech Coalition and stakeholders in and adjacent to the adult entertainment industry.
Plaintiffs intended to block the age verification statute passed by the state legislature last year and entered into force on January 1, 2023. Due to technical grounds, U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan sided with the defendants - state officials, including Attorney General Jeff Landry - in a motion to dismiss because of a lack of jurisdiction. The age verification law was structured as a so-called bounty' law, meaning that state officials are barred from enforcing it, but anyone else in the state can bring suit against a website for failing to implement the age verification. State courts are the responsible venues to hear private causes of action brought against adult platforms that don't follow the age verification law. This means that the only enforcement" comes in the format of a private civil enforcement action entitling the private party resolution in the format of damages, and not by a government official.
We've seen this before. A similar age verification law targeting adult content was implemented in Utah. The Free Speech Coalition and many of the same plaintiffs sued in a federal district court, but the case was dismissed on technical grounds, with that judge citing existing case law.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Whole Woman's Health v. Jackson (2021)that federal lawsuits against government officials that are meant to challenge laws that are designed to only be enforced by private individuals, or bounty hunters,' cannot advance. Mike Masnick wrote an insightful analysis on this in August.
Whole Woman's Health v. Jacksonchallenged a controversial Texas law passed by legislators in 2021, Senate Bill 8 or the Texas Heartbeat Act, that questioned whether abortion activists were able to enjoin state officials with an injunction blocking enforcement of the law that essentially compels private parties to sue people who are suspected of aiding and abetting" an abortion.
The conservative high court ceded to the states' rights crowd and ruled that Texas state officials are protected by sovereign immunity. This is the standard the Free Speech Coalition and other plaintiffs failed to meet in both the Utah and Louisiana lawsuits, according to both judges. The coalition appealed the Utah ruling to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. It appears they will do the same in response to this ruling in Louisiana. Mike Stabile, director of public affairs for the Free Speech Coalition, said that while we disagree and will appeal, it's not at all a ruling on the merits of the law, which are still clearly unconstitutional."
But this is the fucked up part: if you know your federal judicial districts, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana is covered by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals (the appeals court equivalent to the short bus).
The Fifth Circuit is currently hearing oral arguments in the Free Speech Coalition's case brought against Texasfor its age verification law that requires public health labeling. A panel of judges for the circuit issued an administrative stayon a preliminary injunction issued by a Texas federal district judgeindicating that the law violates the First Amendment rights of adult users and the sites. The stay essentially allowed the age verification law to go into effect despite the litigation.
Hopefully, the Fifth Circuit doesn't keep Fifth Circuit-ing."I will spare you the rant on why age verification laws in their current format are violations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. I will leave you with this, though: Porn is a human right, and blocking it in this format is wrong.
*mic drop*
Michael McGrady covers the tech side of the online porn business. He is the contributing editor for AVN.com