MISSOULA, Mont.—The Free Speech Coalition was handed a legal defeat on Wednesday after a Montana federal district judge dismissed a challenge against the state's age verification law, according to court documents seen by AVN.
Montana adopted age verification legislation in 2023 that requires adult entertainment platforms to verify the ages of users who log on from all Montana IP addresses. Given the broad scope of the bill, the Free Speech Coalition sued alongside writers, sex educators and platform companies to block the law.
The FSC lacked legal standing to bring the suit after Montana amended the law to remove the state attorney general's authority to enforce it.
U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy of the District of Montana dismissed the case on no grounds because the actual law relies primarily on private civil enforcement actions brought by individuals, not the government itself. This is similar to Utah, which has a so-called "bounty law."
"While the Paxton decision made the case harder, efforts by Montana to evade responsibility for defending the law were perhaps more significant," FSC director of public policy Mike Stabile for the Free Speech Coalition told AVN.
"When we first brought the case in Montana, state law allowed the attorney general to enforce it, giving us legal standing to bring the case against him," he continued. "After we filed suit, the legislature passed a separate bill removing the attorney general from enforcement in an attempt to undermine the litigation. Though we attempted to fight for standing, ultimately the legislature’s evasive gambit proved successful.
"These are frustrating times, and there are sometimes difficult choices, but it’s critical that we push back when and where we can, to stop even greater restrictions," Stabile added.
As AVN reported previously, bounty laws rely on private citizens to act as law enforcers, or "bounty hunters."
A term like "bounty hunters" is used to describe the case law cited by the Montana federal district judge. The judge cited a U.S. Supreme Court ruling dealing with a controversial law that was implemented in 2021 by religious conservatives and anti-abortion elected lawmakers in the state of Texas, Senate Bill (SB) 8.
Adopted in 2021, SB 8, also known as the "Texas Heartbeat Act," outlaws abortions after six weeks. The law prohibits Texas officials from enforcing the ban but authorizes private individuals and entities to sue someone who performs, aids or abets an abortion procedure after the six-week limit.
Critics of Senate Bill 8 have characterized it as the “abortion bounty law” that grants private citizens—such as anti-abortion activists—an inward-looking extrajudicial deputization to abuse the statute for political and personal gain.
