Florida lawmaker coming after internet porn, introduces age verification bill

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — A Florida lawmaker has filed a bill that could have a large impact on certain online content, proposing a new requirement that websites with adult materials have a stronger age verification process to access their products.

The legislation, Senate Bill 472, was proposed by state senator Ileana Garcia (R-Miami). Garcia’s bill is called Protection of Exploited Persons. Among the various provisions of the senator’s proposal, websites that “contain a substantial portion of” pornographic material or material that may be harmful to minors, would have to “perform reasonable age verification” to ensure only adults view the content.

As written, SB 472 would create additional penalties for owners, operators, or managers of adult theaters who violate state statutes related to verifying customer ages.

Under Garcia’s proposal, owners, operators, and managers of adult theaters would be guilty of a misdemeanor of the first degree if an underage viewer is allowed into the establishment and to consume its content.

Current state law states that it is unlawful to solicit, induce, entice, or procure someone to commit prostitution, lewdness, or assignation. Those who do violate those prohibitions are guilty of a first degree misdemeanor upon first violation, with the penalty and severity growing upon further acts.

SB 472 would enhance the penalties for violators, reiterating the requirement for an educational program focused on offenders regarding prostitution, human trafficking, sexual violence prevention.

Additional penalties, if the bill passes, would also add a minimum 10 day sentence in county jail upon a first violation, growing to 30 days for a second, or other additional violations.

On top of the jail requirements, the education program would be enhanced as well.

As proposed, SB 472 would reformat the current education program for offenders to also include education on:

• Relationships between demand for commercial sex and human trafficking
• The impact of human trafficking on victims
• Coercion, consent, and sexual violence
• Health and legal consequences of commercial sex
• Negative impact of commercial sex on prostituted persons and communities
• Reasons and motivations for engaging in prostitution

For “commercial entities who distribute material harmful to minors,” the bill also proposes new civil remedies. The bill also describes pornographic content as “a public health crisis” with a “corroding influence on minors.”

Blaming technological advances, widespread use of the Internet, and limited age verification requirements, the bill says “minors are exposed to pornography younger in age,” and that the adult materials “contributes to the hypersexualization of teens and prepubescent children and may lead to low self-esteem, body image disorders, problematic sexual activity at a young age, and desire among adolescents to engage in risky sexual behavior.”

The bill also says pornography may have impacts on neurological development and functions, contribute to emotional and medical illnesses, and shape deviant sexual arousal, as well as lead to difficulty in forming or having “positive intimate relationships, and promote problematic or harmful sexual behaviors and addiction.”

Targeting an effective date of Jan. 1, 2024, SB 472 would create new liabilities and penalties for the publishers and distributors of “material harmful to minors.”

Defining the content distributed or sold by businesses, sole proprietors, and other legal entities, including online, the material listed as “harmful” for those under the age of 18 includes:

• Material that appeals to the prurient interest
• Material that exploits or is devoted to, or principally contains, descriptions of actual, simulated, or animated content in a “manner patently offensive with respect to minors” including pubic hair, genitals, nipples of females breasts, and anuses
• Material featuring touching, caressing, or fondling of nipples, breasts, buttocks, anuses, or genitals
• Material depicting sexual intercourse, masturbation, sodomy, bestiality, oral copulation, flagellation, excretory functions, exhibitions, and other sexual acts

If the material does not have “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” for minors, it would also qualify as harmful to minors.

The sites for these publishers must implement “reasonable ag e verification methods” to include requiring digital proof of a driver license or identification card to show proof the individual accessing materials online is at least 18 years of age.

To count as a site with a “majority of content” that is potentially harmful to minors under the aforementioned definitions, sites that contain or publish more than more than 33% of content that is material harmful to minors would be required to have age verification.

A commercial entity for the purpose of the bill is one that contains or uses transactional data for transfer between individuals, commercial entities, or third parties to satisfy a request or event. The transaction data could include mortgage records, education records, and employment information, among others.

Companies that “knowingly and intentionally” publishes said material online must perform reasonable age verification or face potential violations of state law. If the bill passes, that would make the commercial entities in question liable for court costs, attorneys fees, and other damages.

However, the section would not apply to “bona fide news or public interest broadcast, website video, report, or event,” insofar as it would apply to the rights of a news-gathering organization.

News-gathering organizations are defined in the bill as employees of newspapers, news publications, both printed or online and on mobile devices, that publishes content of current news and public interest, as well as employees of radio broadcast stations, television broadcast stations, cable television operators, and wire service employees.

The employees must be able to provide documents verifying their employment in these organizations, according to the bill’s provisions.

SB 472 was filed in early February by Garcia, but has not yet made it to any committees for review in the legislature. The Free Speech Coalition, a nonprofit organization advocating on behalf of the adult entertainment industry, has announced its opposition to the bill.

Describing SB 472 as “identical” to a bill in Louisiana for age verification, FSC said Garcia’s bill was “a veritable grab bag of regressive, unconstitutional policies designed to harm the adult entertainment industry.”

Continuing, FSC said the bill copies the Louisiana law by including an “age verification mandate that requires visitors to websites containing over 33.33% “material harmful to minors” to submit their government ID or other private data in order to access Constitutionally-protected sexual expression.”

Source: WFLA