CINCINNATI—A panel of three judges sitting on the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a previous lower court ruling that blocked the state of Tennessee from enforcing an age verification statute applied explicitly to adult entertainment platforms.
The ruling was issued on Tuesday, putting a federal district court injunction on hold while essentially pending the outcome of similar litigation. Citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Free Speech Coalition et al. v. Paxton, the panel of judges found age verification constitutional under lower standards.
Age verification is regulated in Tennessee under the Protect Tennessee Minors Act (PTMA), which was amended to reflect the legal structure of the Texas age verification law, House Bill (HB) 1181. As AVN reported, the law is analogous to the Texas law and similar statutes adopted and in force across the country.
“[The] Supreme Court has upheld a Texas statute that the Court described as ‘materially similar’ to the one at issue here,” adds the panel of judges, noting that the “state has also since amended the PTMA, the Attorney General says, to track ‘the definitional language at issue in Paxton almost word for word.'”
