Porn Industry Group Loses Challenge to Louisiana Age-Check Law

A federal court in Louisiana rejected a porn-industry group’s challenge to a state law requiring websites to verify the age of visitors before providing them with adult content.

Three state officials named as defendants in Free Speech Coalition’s lawsuit are immune from the allegations, because they don’t have authority to enforce the law, Judge Susie Morgan of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana said Wednesday.

The plaintiffs also lacked standing to bring the lawsuit because they couldn’t show the defendants were the cause of their injury or that the court had the power to issue injunctive relief that would prevent private parties from filing lawsuits against them to enforce the law, Morgan said.

The court challenge comes as state lawmakers across the country have been considering proposals aimed at protecting minors from harmful content on the Internet and from social media addiction.

The Free Speech Coalition argues that age-check policies invade privacy and threaten adults’ freedom to browse the web as they wish, while forcing online platforms to regulate internet traffic state-by-state.

The coalition’s challenge to a Utah age-verification law was rejected by a federal court Aug. 1. The laws in both states reserve enforcement exclusively to private parties.

The Free Speech Coalition enjoyed greater success Aug. 31 in its challenge to Texas’s age-verification law, which doesn’t rely on private enforcement. The coalition won a court order blocking the state’s attorney general from enforcing the law while the challenge is pending.

Sovereign Immunity

Louisiana argued in a motion to dismiss that the coalition’s claims were barred by sovereign immunity, and Morgan agreed.

At issue was whether the defendant officials had authority to enforce the age-verification law, which could expose them to citizen suits claiming that they, as state officials, violated of federal law, she said.

None of the state officials named as defendants in the coalition’s challenge had a particular duty to enforce the law, a requirement under Fifth Circuit precedent for the exception to sovereign immunity to apply, the judge said.

The defendant officials were Department of Public Safety and Corrections Secretary James LeBlanc, Division of Administration Commissioner Jay Dardenne, and Attorney General Jeffrey Landry.

The plaintiffs also failed to establish that the defendants were the cause of their injury, or that the court could redress the harm, two of the requirements for Article III standing, Morgan said.

The engine of the law’s action was its private right of action provision, but nowhere did the plaintiffs show how the defendants were the cause of the injuries that would flow from private lawsuits, she said.

They also failed to show how a court order aimed at the defendants would redress injuries arising from the actions of private parties seeking to enforce the law, she said.

Webb Daniel Friedlander LLP and D. Gill Sperlein of San Francisco represent the Free Speech Coalition.

The case is Free Speech Coalition v. LeBlanc, E.D. La., No. 2:23-cv-02123, 10/4/23.