Submitted by Friedman Nemecek on
On June 30, 2025, Governor DeWine signed Ohio H.B. 96 into law. The 3,156-page budget bill, which outlines the state’s financial appropriations for fiscal year 2026-27, includes a proposed provision establishing an age-verification requirement for Ohioans seeking to access online pornography. This mandate can be found in Section 1349.10 of the bill, which goes into effect on September 29, 2025. Should the provision go into effect, Ohio would join 24 other states who have enacted or passed similar legislation.
Under the new proposed law, any organization which “sells, delivers, furnishes, disseminates, provides, exhibits, or presents” any material or performance which is “obscene or harmful to juveniles” must verify the age of any user located in Ohio through reasonable age verification methods. According to the proposal as written, these “reasonable age verification methods” include the use of photo identification or public or private transactional data to verify that each user is at least eighteen years of age. This means that Ohioans would have to upload a picture of their Photo ID or other sensitive data before accessing adult content online. Notably, H.B. 96 also directs the target websites to immediately delete all information gathered for the purposes of age verification once the process is complete.
The enforcement of this new proposed law would be directed at the online providers of pornography, not at consumers. Pursuant to the proposed law, the Ohio Attorney General would be empowered to bring civil lawsuits against online providers of pornography who do not comply with the new age verification requirements. The new law would not create criminal or civil penalties for juveniles who access online pornography or adults who do so without first verifying their age.
Ohio H.B. 96 comes in the wake of a recent decision by the United States Supreme Court which upheld a similar age-verification law in Texas. In Free Speech Coalition, Inc., et al., v. Paxton, a divided Supreme Court upheld a Texas law which requires websites to verify the age of its users. A 6-3 majority found that Texas had a “compelling interest” in preventing children from accessing sexually explicit content and that the Texas age-verification requirement was lawful because it presented only an “incidental” effect on adults’ right to access pornography, which is speech protected under the First Amendment.
Critics of H.B. 96 and similar laws across the United States argue that age-verification requirements present a substantial risk to the privacy of adults who seek to access lawful content, citing the potential for leaks or data breaches which may reveal users’ private and sensitive browsing data. Moreover, critics of the bill argue that similar laws have been ineffective at preventing minors from accessing adult content and instead direct internet traffic towards less mainstream websites which are not likely to institute age verification. These “underground” sites, which critics argue are far too numerous to be effectively regulated, are also much less likely to employ measures to remove illegal content, such as revenge porn or child sexual abuse material, effectively putting children at greater risk. PornHub, the world’s top adult website and one which employs strict measures to remove illegal content from its site, has already suspended service in the state of Texas, and other states with similar legislation, citing an inability to conform with the new law’s requirements. One may expect a similar suspension of service in Ohio once the new law takes effect.
H.B. 96 is intended to go into effect on September 29, 2025, and the relevant portion can be read here. If you or a loved one have questions regarding your rights while browsing the internet or need legal representation for an online sexual offense, please do not hesitate to contact the dedicated team of attorneys at Friedman Nemecek Long & Grant, L.L.C.
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