LOS ANGELES—The Free Speech Coalition (FSC) has refiled an amended complaint against the state of Tennessee in a bid to further restrict an age verification law that imposes such far-reaching penalties that violators face felony charges and up to 15 years in prison. The law covers adult websites that are required to check ages.
Age verification is regulated in Tennessee under the Protect Tennessee Minors Act (PTMA), which was amended to reflect the legal structure of the Texas age verification law, House Bill (HB) 1181. As AVN reported, the law is intended to be analogous to Texas law and to similar statutes adopted across the country. Clearly, it isn't.
In the amended complaint, attorneys representing FSC and several companies that sued alongside the adult industry trade group further stressed that the law remains a looming specter, given the asymmetric criminal penalties for noncompliance with or violations of the PTMA. These criminal penalties are quite severe.
Attorneys for the FSC and their fellow plaintiffs argue in the amended complaint that the PTMA "places substantial burdens on [the] plaintiff website operators, content creators, and countless others who use the internet by requiring websites to age-verify every internet user before providing access to non-obscene material that meets the state's definition of 'harmful to minors.'" They also argue that the PTMA law's provisions continue to violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
"The PTMA imposes liability in two different ways—owed both civilly to 'an individual for damages resulting from a minor’s accessing the content harmful to minors, including court costs and reasonable attorney fees' and criminally to the State, with a violation constituting a Class C felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison and $10,000 in fines," the suit reads. "The Texas law at issue in Paxton did not include any criminal provision—much less one subjecting a violator to 15 years imprisonment."
Here, attorneys for the FSC are referring to the Texas age verification law mentioned above, which was central to Free Speech Coalition et al. v. Paxton. The conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, that the state of Texas has the authority to enforce age verification laws as constitutional under a lower level of scrutiny. The Texas law broadly covers age verification and threatens civil penalties. A federal appeals court ruled shortly after the high court's decision that Tennessee can enforce the PTMA, despite ongoing litigation in the first phase of the Free Speech Coalition lawsuit filed against the state and its Republican Attorney General, Jonathan Skrmetti.
The amended complaint is unrelenting in accusing Skrmetti and the state of Tennessee of full-scale censorship and unlawful criminal persecution. The complaint notes, "[The] PTMA further restricts and chills the speech of online content providers and restricts the availability of certain material to those entitled and wishing to receive it."
Corey Silverstein, a First Amendment attorney specializing in adult industry clients, told AVN in an email that the complaint is a strong sign from the FSC. Silverstein said, "[The] plaintiffs did what they had to do in this instance. This case differs from the Paxton case because of the criminal penalties under Tennessee’s age verification law, and I remain hopeful for a positive outcome. I remain very concerned that the Supreme Court has moved the bar, so to speak, and the results are unpredictable."
In a statement to AVN, FSC executive director Alison Boden shared similar sentiments. She said, "Tennessee’s age verification law goes so far beyond what the Supreme Court deemed reasonable that FSC must continue to fight this case. The threat of criminal charges and the requirement to re-verify users hourly are not designed to protect children; they’re designed to force adult content out of the state." The docket also shows Skrmetti's office working to dismiss the lawsuit on grounds of failure to state a claim. When a party in a lawsuit argues that another party has failed to state a claim, this typically means there is no legal basis for the claim in the specific suit.
