PHOENIX—Arizona could have a new record-keeping law that would require adult entertainment firms operating in the state's digital space to maintain documents verifying consent, while also requiring them to retain and then delete key consent-related documents. The bill is HB 2133, or the so-called "Protect Act."
At the time of this writing, the Protect Act has been fast-tracked through the Republican-controlled state House of Representatives. The bill is now before the Senate.
There is also a likelihood of a requirement for a notary public, similar to a law in Alabama that requires such documentation to be notarized, and to a record-keeping law adopted by the North Carolina state legislature last year. As AVN reported, both of these laws have been said to contravene the federal record-keeping laws. The federal record-keeping requirement for porn production is 18 U.S. Code § 2257 and is enforced by the U.S. Justice Department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section.
Proposed by GOP state Rep. Nick Kupper, the Protect Act explicitly requires that adult content producers document and verify consent through "reasonable measures" for every person depicted in an image or video considered pornographic and sexual in nature. This act covers "sexual material on the internet," per the bill language.
This standard would also apply to artificial intelligence images and deepfakes, even if productions are consensual. The proposed law's contradictory provisions are blatant. HB 2133 defines "reasonable consent verification methods," which include "an affidavit that attests to the consent and age of each depicted person," "verification through an independent third party," and "[any] other commercially reasonable method that does not retain identifying information after the verification is complete.”
"Arizona’s new law creates multiple constitutional issues separate from those raised in the case of [Free Speech Coalition et al. v. Paxton]," commented Corey Silverstein, an attorney from Michigan who represents clients in the adult entertainment industry and specializes in First Amendment law. Silverstein referenced a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court from last year that permitted an age verification law in Texas to remain in force, ultimately classifying pornography as a lesser form of protected speech.
"The adult industry (especially Arizona residents) needs to be vocal, reach out to Arizona state lawmakers on social media, and publicly express their discontent with the proposed law," he explained. "A review of the proposed law leads me to conclude that it is so ambiguous in its current form that I’m not sure the lawmakers themselves know what they intended. I have serious reservations about the law passing in its present form, but I am deeply concerned that some future variation of it will."
Arizona adopted an age verification law covering pornography websites in the spring of 2025. Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, signed an age-verification law in May 2025, a year after she vetoed a similar proposal on First Amendment grounds.
