(The Center Square) – Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti is asking a federal appeals court to allow the Protect Tennessee Minors Act to take effect while litigation proceeds.
U.S. District Court Judge Sheryl H. Lipman issued an injunction Tuesday temporarily stopping the law from going into effect on Wednesday, the first day of the new year.
The law requires companies that provide content deemed inappropriate for minors to use age-verification software. Anyone who violates the law could be charged with a Class C felony. The Free Speech Coalition and four companies sued in federal court.
Lipman said the law requires websites to make significant efforts to separate protected adult speech from minors, which is similar to what other states have tried to do.
“In doing so, the PTMA forces adult content creators to take costly measures to display constitutionally protected material, and it forces adult content consumers to give up their privacy to access material they have a constitutional right to access,” Lipman said in the order. “Because of the breadth of these laws, federal courts are not strangers to them, and they are not kind to them, either. The First Amendment is as clear here as it is anywhere else: a content-based restriction on protected adult speech is presumptively unconstitutional.”
Skrmetti said other courts have allowed similar laws to take effect.
“The Protect Tennessee Minors Act institutes common sense age verification to stop kids from accessing explicit obscene content while protecting the privacy of adults who choose to do so,” Skrmetti said. “Adults regularly have to prove their age to do things kids aren’t allowed to do, like vote, buy a gun, or go to a bar.”
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on similar Texas law on Jan. 15. The Free Speech Coalition, which is also the plaintiff in that case, is challenging other laws in Louisiana, Utah, Indiana, Montana, and Florida, the organization said in a release.
“This is a deeply flawed law that put website operators at risk of criminal prosecution for something as trivial as a mention of the human nipple,” said Free Speech Coalition Executive Director Alison Boden in response to the Tennessee ruling.