Pornhub disables website in Texas rather than comply with state’s age verification law

Pornhub website logo. / Credit: Kate Krav-Rude/Shutterstock

CNA Staff, Mar 15, 2024 / 11:25 am (CNA).

Pornhub, one of the largest pornography websites in the world, has ceased offering its website in Texas rather than comply with the state’s recently implemented age verification law.

State Attorney General Ken Paxton said on X on Thursday that Pornhub “has now disabled its website in Texas.” 

The porn website pulled the service after a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling last week that declared Texas’ pornography site age verification law, passed in 2023, could stand. 

Texas visitors to Pornhub’s website on Thursday were greeted with a message stating that the state was “requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website.”

“Not only does this impinge on the rights of adults to access protected speech, it fails strict scrutiny by employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas’ stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors,” the website claims. 

Alex Kekesi, vice president of brand and community at Pornhub’s parent company Aylo, told media on Thursday that the age verification rule is “ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous.” 

“Not only will it not actually protect children, it will inevitably reduce content creators’ ability to post and distribute legal adult content and directly impact their ability to share the artistic messages they want to convey with it,” Kekesi said.

Paxton, meanwhile, argued on X that pornography sites such as Pornhub “are on the run because Texas has a law that aims to prevent them from showing harmful, obscene material to children.” 

“We recently secured a major victory against Pornhub and other sites that sought to block this law from taking effect,” Paxton said. “In Texas, companies cannot get away with showing porn to children. If they don’t want to comply, good riddance.”

Pornhub has faced increasing scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers in recent years. The European Union in December announced that Pornhub must comply with major age verification and safety laws passed in 2022 by the governing body. 

Age verification laws that passed bipartisan legislatures and were signed by both Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike, meanwhile, have lately led Pornhub to cease offering its videos in Mississippi, Utah, Virginia, and multiple other states.

Pope Francis, meanwhile, in 2022 called pornography “a permanent attack on the dignity of men and women” and “a threat to public health.”