Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued the company behind Pornhub for not complying with state-level age verification rules. The suit, filed in Travis County District Court against Pornhub parent Aylo, accuses Aylo of failing to implement “reasonable age verification methods” on Pornhub and other adult sites that it owns. It seeks millions of dollars in damages under a law that was initially blocked as unconstitutional, then allowed to take effect last year.
Texas is one of numerous states that have pushed for stricter age verification on either pornographic sites specifically or large parts of the internet as a whole. Its version of the law, HB 1181, requires that pornographic sites use either their own methods or a third-party service to collect information like a government-issued ID to ensure minors don’t get in.
HB 1181 also requires that the sites display “sexual materials health warnings” making dubiously substantiated claims about pornography’s effects on health. Pornhub reportedly added these warnings last year, although Texas also accuses Aylo of failing to display them. Aylo declined to comment on the suit.
