PHOENIX — Arizona state legislators, including several GOP members, have raised serious questions about a Republican senator’s proposal to implement mandatory age verification for adult websites in the state.
The bill, SB 1503, was introduced by Sen. Wendy Rogers (R-Flagstaff) and is a copycat version of Louisiana’s Act 440, a new law enacted in January after being championed by a religious anti-porn activist Republican legislator.
Rogers’ bill would require age verification for all websites with a “substantial portion” of what the bill terms “material harmful to minors.”
According to the Arizona Mirror, Rogers’ first draft “suggested doing this by collecting a government-issued ID or digital ID card.”
SB 1503 had already passed the state Senate with the support of all Republicans and a few Democrats, but it faltered in the House on Monday when a vote failed to gain bipartisan support.
The current version of the bill, the Mirror reports, asks companies that host the vaguely defined “harmful content” to use either a “commercially available database” or “any other commercially reasonable method” for age verification.
Like many of the other copycat bills introduced by religious conservatives in state legislatures across the country, Rogers’ bill does not clearly define these AV methods.
An Unclear Bill From a Fringe Right Extremist
On Monday, Rep. Alma Hernandez (D-Tucson) called SB 1503 merely “a statement bill.” Arguing against it, she said, “I don’t feel comfortable making people put in their ID information to access the internet, that is just weird.”
Rep. Alexander Kolodin (R-Scottsdale) said that even though he thought the bill’s stated goal of protecting minors “would be great,” he thought it presented unavoidable constitutional problems.
Sen. Rogers is active in the extreme-right fringe of the Republican Party. In March 2022, the Arizona State Senate took the unusual step, in a bipartisan vote, of formally censuring her for calling for violence against her political opponents and “damaging the reputation of the Arizona State Senate by her actions.”
Rogers had spoken at a conference organized by white nationalist agitator Nick Fuentes, where she “called for her political rivals to be hanged” and “used antisemitic tropes,” NPR reported at the time.
FSC 'Got to Work' Lobbying Against Anti-Porn Bill
Free Speech Coalition Director of Communications Mike Stabile told XBIZ today that last month, when the Arizona bill passed out of committee with no opposition, “the FSC got to work.”
Stabile noted that reps for the adult industry trade group spoke out in the media and contacted every Arizona legislator to convey FSC’s opposition to the bill and send a message: “We support efforts to keep kids off adult sites, but the bill as written was dangerous, ineffective and unconstitutional.”
Stabile added that FSC was gratified when Arizona lawmakers then made those same arguments in opposition to the bill.
“There's still a chance the bill can come back, but we've accomplished an incredible amount in an incredibly short amount of time,” he said. “Too many states passed this legislation without understanding it. FSC has been in overdrive in the past few months fighting to stop it. We've been successful in several states.”
Stabile stressed that while FSC is “working overtime,” the organization is still limited by its resources.
“The industry can stop the madness if we make an effort, but that means actually engaging in the fight,” he urged. “We could be doing so much more, but we need more than goodwill. We need dues-paying members who believe this fight is worth winning.”