More than a year after Florida lawmakers passed a measure that they said would help protect children online, plaintiffs have dropped a challenge to part of the law that requires age verification for access to websites with pornographic content.
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker on Tuesday closed a lawsuit filed in December by the Free Speech Coalition, an adult-entertainment industry group, and other plaintiffs. That came a day after the plaintiffs said they were dismissing the case following a U.S. Supreme Court decision last month that upheld the constitutionality of a similar Texas law.
The dismissal does not affect a separate lawsuit challenging another part of last year’s law (HB 3) that seeks to prevent children under age 16 from opening social-media accounts on some platforms. Walker last month issued a preliminary injunction to block the social-media restrictions on First Amendment grounds, and the state has appealed.
The law was one of the highest-profile issues of the 2024 legislative session, with most of the focus on the social-media issue.
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The porn-related part of the law applies to any business that “knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors on a website or application, if the website or application contains a substantial portion of material harmful to minors.” It defines “substantial portion” as more than 33.3 percent of total material on a website or app.
In such situations, the law requires businesses to use methods to “verify that the age of a person attempting to access the material is 18 years of age or older and prevent access to the material by a person younger than 18 years of age.”
The lawsuit raised objections about how the law would apply to minors and adults, including saying it “demands that, as a condition of access to constitutionally protected content, an adult must provide a digital proof of identity to adult content websites that are doubtlessly capable of tracking specific searches and views of some of the most sensitive, personal, and private contents a human being might search for.”
But the U.S. Supreme Court last month rejected arguments that the similar Texas law violates First Amendment rights. The court’s majority opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, said such age-verification laws “fall within states’ authority to shield children from sexually explicit content.”
“The First Amendment leaves undisturbed states’ traditional power to prevent minors from accessing speech that is obscene from their perspective,” said the opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. “That power necessarily includes the power to require proof of age before an individual can access such speech. It follows that no person — adult or child — has a First Amendment right to access speech that is obscene to minors without first submitting proof of age.”
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After the Supreme Court ruling, Walker ordered the parties in the Florida case to take steps including setting a “timeframe for plaintiffs to file supplemental arguments now that the Supreme Court has provided additional guidance as to the applicable level of scrutiny that applies to plaintiffs’ claims.”
But on Monday, the plaintiffs filed a notice of dismissing the case. Pornhub drew national attention last year when it said it would block people in Florida from having access to the site because of the law — a step it also took in other states that passed similar laws.
The social-media part of the law seeks to prevent children under age 16 from opening social-media accounts on certain platforms — though it would allow parents to give consent for 14- and 15-year-olds to have accounts. Children under 14 could not open accounts.
In issuing a preliminary injunction, Walker sided with arguments raised by the industry groups NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association that the restrictions likely violate the First Amendment. The groups filed the lawsuit in October.
The state’s appeal of the preliminary-injunction ruling is pending at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
