LOS ANGELES—The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the summer of 2025 that age verification laws that specifically target online adult entertainment platforms were constitutional. In a 6-3 decision supporting a controversial Texas law that requires such things, the conservative high court trounced free expression.
Such a decision has rapidly changed the internet as many know it, leading many in the adult industry to comprehend potentially damaging fines and penalties. Twenty-five states have adopted age verification laws, many of which specifically target access to adult entertainment platforms and their users.
That's roughly 169 million people. The U.S. Census Bureau reports a total population of over 343 million across the United States.
That means nearly 50 percent of all American residents live under an age verification law or regulation (e.g., Missouri) that are all similar, sure, but differ enough to invite inconsistencies, scant uniformity, and abject censorship of forms of expression that are otherwise protected under the First Amendment at the federal level.
Presented as measures to keep minors safe, these laws have proven ineffective and are derived from ideological alignments with rising far-right sentiments. Take a recent case, for example. AVN reported earlier this month on Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita filing suit in state court against Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub.com.
In that lawsuit, Rokita's office alleged that Aylo failed to comply with the state's age verification law by not blocking IP addresses masked by virtual private networks.
Given the basic function of these laws, virtual private networks (VPNs) and similar software render content restrictions, such as age verification, impotent. But Rokita and his allies want to create a legal precedent that would ultimately render a hallmark privacy and anonymity category of software useless.
Privacy rights activists champion VPNs, with roughly a third of all Americans using these readily available software products for personal and professional use. Trends and use have risen in recent years, as age-verification laws have driven a surge in VPN adoption among consumers seeking to circumvent content restrictions.
In fact, regulators and government officials in various countries have called for age-verification measures for VPNs to prevent minors from using them. AVN reported on one such case where Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children's Commissioner of England, called for age verification on VPNs, which is "one of my major recommendations."
Rokita is showing his cards, seeking to codify this in state law here in the United States. One proposal introduced and later killed in the Michigan state legislature sought to criminalize age verification noncompliance by expanding the measure as a total ban on pornography, with VPN usage criminalized.
Age-verification legislative proposals in the new year will be even more extreme, as they will be presented to address loopholes in content-restriction laws.
And federal proposals for age verification and so-called online safety, namely the long-debated Kids Online Safety Act, are highly likely to be adopted.
Already, the Federal Trade Commission is hosting a seminar with experts and officials on the pros and cons of national age-verification laws in anticipation of a measure that could win approval in Congress and be sent to President Donald Trump's desk.
It is essential to note that 2025 battered the adult industry and entire categories of speech that the First Amendment otherwise protects. And it isn't out of the blue. As AVN has documented for years now, the efforts to heavily restrict access to pornography and censor it are years in the making.
For example, the Heritage Foundation centrally coordinated the Project 2025 efforts that saw Trump returned to office. Project 2025 was a coalition of Christian nationalists and other right-wing organizations, scholars, and activists who proposed once-outlandish concepts like banning all pornography.
A central figure instrumental in the Project 2025 mission presented age verification laws as a "backdoor" to banning pornography, using safety rhetoric to sell the plan.
Lo and behold, the Supreme Court effectively laid the groundwork for further damage at the expense of millions of industry workers and tens of millions of users. 2026 is a midterm election year in the United States. As demonstrated in 2024, political power from adult industry stakeholders is considerable and palpable.
The industry’s opposition to age-verification laws is less about resisting regulation and more about how these laws operate in reality. Sentiments of protecting youth from inappropriate material on the internet are not unique to just Republicans and critics of the adult industry who present themselves as morally superior.
Note that experts from the conservative American Enterprise Institute have criticized age verification, as have many libertarian groups, such as Reason Foundation and the Koch Brothers' network organization Americans for Prosperity. How does this reconcile when Democrats backed age verification in their states or in Congress?
Louisiana, the first state to adopt and enforce age-verification laws targeting pornography in 2022, was led by Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards when the law took effect. Arizona 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.
That question of reconciliation is complicated, as these laws create complex socio-legal scenarios never before seen in U.S. jurisprudence.
Many of these laws require users to submit government ID or biometric data, including facial scans powered by artificial intelligence, to access lawful content, creating serious privacy and security risks for consumers and platforms alike. Centralizing sensitive data also increases exposure to breaches, surveillance, and misuse.
Again, critics argue that these laws are ineffective at protecting minors. Age verification systems are easily bypassed using common tools like VPNs, meaning determined underage users can still access content, while adults face barriers to legal expression. Or, the content blocks will shift people to unlawful and sketchier platforms.
There is also concern that vague or uneven enforcement encourages censorship. Faced with steep fines and extensive legal uncertainty, platforms often over-block or withdraw from entire states, disproportionately harming independent creators and small businesses.
What is the justification if this impacts the adult entertainment industry negatively? This might be up to the stakeholder, but the perspective that age verification harms the adult industry is a reasonable assessment. And such an assessment could have gnawing implications in the year ahead.
A balance needs to be found between respecting the rights of adults and professionals in this space and promoting efforts to counter minors' viewing pornography.
The approaches that demonstrate actual evidential support and respect for civil liberties include education campaigns to inform minors and young adults of the fictional nature of pornography, especially on the front of mainstream adult production, and a greater emphasis on involving parents in content filtering online tools.
The Restricted to Adults (RTA) label administered by the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection remains one of the most effective tools at preventing minors from viewing age-restricted material. Software suites like Qustodio, Net Nanny, and Norton Family are affordable and accessible.
Many free options exist to filter out adult content, too, such as search engine safe search functions and parental filters already built into most operating systems.
Age verification at the site-level is simply a band-aid. The age verification debate is not just a free-speech issue or a platform headache, either.
It is a non-traditional labor rights issue. As evidenced by experience, platforms leave jurisdictions and lose ad-share revenue. Revenue sharing and affiliate marketing are standard methods for monetizing content in this space.
Adult creators are dependent on platforms to distribute and monetize their content and/or acquire new web traffic from social media networks like X and Reddit.
New web traffic translates to income. As AVN reported extensively, Aylo has repeatedly stated that web traffic in some jurisdictions has dropped by nearly 80 percent.
For example, Aylo saw a 77 percent drop in web traffic in the United Kingdom due to the country's Online Safety Act and inconsistent enforcement from Ofcom.
Ultimately, the fight over age verification is not about protecting children versus tolerating harm, but about whether states will defend privacy, free expression, and lawful labor—or allow moral panic and political ambition to quietly dismantle them—in an effort to reach equity and compromise.
