Today, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed HB 1181, which mandates that porn sites implement age verification in order to prevent children from accessing adult content. Texas is the seventh state to pass legislation protecting kids from online porn, joining Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Utah, and Virginia.

American Principles Project (APP) was involved from the start in the effort to enact this law in Texas, working with state lawmakers to introduce legislation and providing expert testimony at the State House. For years, APP has been an advocate for age-verification mandates for porn sites as an obvious and popular policy solution to address the growing issue of kids’ access to pornography.

Polling by APP in six Senate swing states in 2022 found that 77 percent of voters support requiring porn sites to verify the ages of their users.

APP President Terry Schilling released the following statement celebrating the signing of the Texas law:

“The vast majority of Americans agree that we should not be giving children access to online porn. And yet, while we’ve managed to restrict kids’ access to alcohol, tobacco, and gambling, until now we haven’t done the same for adult content. Unsurprisingly, this has had disastrous consequences — a recent study found that children on average first encounter porn at age 12, with other research showing the damaging effects that regular porn use can lead to. This is nothing short of a public health crisis.

“Fortunately, state leaders are finally beginning to act, including those in Texas. We thank Gov. Abbott and state lawmakers, particularly Rep. Nate Schatzline and Sen. Angela Paxton, for making the protection of children a priority this legislative session. Keeping kids away from online porn should be a political no-brainer, and we urge other states, as well as federal lawmakers, to address this issue as soon as possible.”

To schedule an engagement with American Principles Project, contact Paul Dupont at (o) 202-503-2010 or pdupont@americanprinciplesproject.org.