TOPEKA, Kan.—The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), a controversial far-right anti-pornography lobbying group, sued the parent companies of several adult platforms in a federal district court in Kansas on behalf of a Jane Doe mother and her child in a set of lawsuits announced Monday.
Targets of the four separate federal lawsuits include the parent companies of Chaturbate.com, Jerkmate.com, Superporn.com and a company called Titan Websites, which is the hosting company for a hentai tube site called HentaiCity.com.
Kansas adopted its controversial age verification measure in April. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly refused to sign the age verification bill into law, but the state legislature was able to beat the pocket veto to implement the measure, becoming law.
Now, NCOSE has a test case—with a Kansas minor and mother as plaintiffs—against companies that don't comply with the verification statute.
“Kansas law requires pornography companies to implement reasonable age verification methods, and the companies named in these lawsuits failed to do so, resulting in [the minor's] access to material that is harmful to minors,” said Dani Pinter, senior vice president of NCOSE and director of the group's litigation center.
Noncompliance with the age verification law in Kansas could prove costly. The minimum penalties for private enforcement actions start at $50,000 per violation.
Actions brought by the state government are up to $10,000 per violation. Adult industry firms and professionals have expressed concern that this could lead to frivolous lawsuits that could negatively impact thousands, including professionals in Kansas.
Since these four suits were filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, this could prove to be a potentially lucrative payout for Jane Doe and her child. According to details provided in the lawsuits, Doe's child accessed adult platforms through an old laptop that had no parental filters.
Reportedly, Jane Doe was "vigilant in monitoring [her child's] devices to prevent his exposure to harmful material." The older device defeated Doe's efforts, NCOSE says.
Corey Silverstein, an attorney who specializes in First Amendment litigation and representing adult entertainment industry clients, told AVN that NCOSE is performative in bringing these cases.
"I’m not surprised to see the initiation of this type of litigation," he said. "The states that have passed these age verification laws have been eager to start testing them out, regardless of the challenge to Texas’s age verification law pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, and Kansas is surely aware that constitutional defenses will follow."
In January, Kris Kobach, the Republican attorney general for Kansas, sued the owner of MetArt.com and other platforms.
