(The Center Square) – Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs’ office is opposing a bill that seeks to prevent the distribution of child pornography and revenge porn, according to state Rep. Nick Kupper, R-Yuma, sponsor of House Bill 2133.
The Center Square reached out to the Democratic governor for comment, but Hobbs and her staff did not respond before press time despite multiple requests this week for comment.
Kupper told The Center Square that he anticipates House Democrats who originally supported his bill in the state House will switch their votes when representatives vote on the amended version on Monday.
He added he thinks Hobbs will veto the bill and has been trying to persuade Democrats to reject his legislation so the governor can “argue it’s a partisan bill.”
“ I think she’s afraid of what it looks like to veto a bill that protects children from being in porn and protects nonconsensual adults from being in porn against their will,” he said. “[Hobbs] or her people think that if they can label it as a partisan bill that’s anti-free speech, they can justify going against it.”
Kupper said the bill does not violate free speech, noting child pornography and revenge porn are not protected speech.
HB 2133, also known as the Protect Act, requires online commercial websites that publish or distribute sexual materials to receive age verification and consent from everyone involved in the material.
The bill also requires commercial websites to use reasonable measures to stop the uploading of unverified sexual material, such as automated detection tools.
Arizona’s state House passed the bill 41 to 16, with nine Democrats voting with Republicans in favor of the bill in February. The state Senate passed the amended bill 16-12 along party lines.
Kupper told The Center Square this week that when the bill went to the Senate Judiciary Committee, numerous concerns were raised, including that it would block satire and impede record-keeping.
He said he amended his bill to address these concerns.
The Senate’s amended version of HB 2133 included a provision that says the law would not apply to digitally manipulated images or to images that are for parody, comedy, artistic expression or public criticism.
Furthermore, the amended bill included a new provision for content created before 1988, which does not need to undergo the verification process. The reason this year was chosen is that it was when the federal government passed a law requiring the adult content industry to begin keeping records of age and consent.
HB 2133 also now allows for data to be shared with federal, state and local governments.
While Kupper was working on changes to his billl, he said someone from the governor’s office reached out to him and started a conversation about the bill. He said the only concern raised was about the satire clause.
Kupper said he sent the governor’s office the added language that exempted satire.
A few days later, the state representative said Hobbs’ office got back to him, saying the added language to his bill did not fully address the office’s concern.
Kupper said he asked the governor’s office to send him the language it wants added to the bill.
The governor’s office ended up sending him a strike-everything amendment that removed “every single word of [his] bill except for the title,” according to Kupper.
“They wrote a completely different bill that did not do at all what my bill did,” he said.
The state representative said he told the person from Hobbs’ office that he worked with Meta, Google and the Free Speech Coalition on the bill. He added that it had a supermajority of votes in the state House.
The woman who approached Kupper about running this bill said she was a victim of revenge porn.
Uldouz Wallace, an actress, said she was a victim of the 2014 iCloud hack/leak, where she and more than 100 other celebrities, including Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and Selena Gomez, had private images leaked online by hackers.
Wallace told The Center Square that after this occurred, it “basically destroyed every part of [her] life.”
Wallace said the hacker leaked private photos of her, which caused her “whole world” to come “crumbling down.”
“Throughout that time, I experienced severe bullying, harassment, gang stalking and targeting, Wallace said.
The actress added that a lot of the “bullying and harassing” came from other actresses and influencers.
After her photos were leaked, Wallace said she remained silent for eight years.
During this time, she said she asked adult websites to take down her nonconsensual content.
According to Wallace, she spent millions of her own dollars attempting to have these websites take down the items.
“I didn’t see any results from it; it was a bottomless pit, and it was never-ending. I was just wondering why nobody has done anything about this,” she said.
Wallace told The Center Square that she quickly realized how much time was wasted attempting to take down these images, along with how much money and effort it took to remove the content from websites.
She questioned why it was up to the “survivors” to have to take down all this content when “it should not have happened in the first place.”
Wallace said she decided to share her story with the public and also try to change the law.
She said she worked with federal lawmakers to come up with a federal bill to require platforms that host pornography to obtain verified consent from people uploading content or appearing in the content. It would also require these websites to remove nonconsensual images from their platforms.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, introduced the Protect Act of 2024. The bill was read twice on the Senate floor and referred to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Lee’s bill never made it to the Senate floor for a vote.
Wallace also started a nonprofit called Foundation Ra, which “supports children, women and men that are victims of online image-based sexual abuse,” according to its website.
At the state level, she has had the Protect Act introduced in California, Massachusetts, South Carolina and in the United Kingdom.
Wallace also had the Protect Act introduced in the United Kingdom, where the House of Lords passed Amendment 300 last week.
The actress also said she is working with the United Nations, Canada, the European Union and the African Union.
“The real solution is prevention,” she said.
Wallace called Kupper’s HB 2133 an “easy common sense bill” because these online platforms already have the technology to prevent nonconsensual content from getting uploaded.
