A law that gets shelved by the very agency meant to enforce it, on the day it takes effect — that's where Utah's SB 73 stands right now. The bill was originally set to officially go into effect this Thursday, but the Utah Department of Commerce has already signaled it won't be implementing the regulation until a federal judge rules on the related lawsuit. Fox 13 News reported on the department's decision.
SB 73 is the first state law in the US to directly write VPN usage into an age verification framework. It was signed into law by the Utah state legislature back in March, with an original effective date of May. Under the bill, anyone physically located within Utah is considered to be "accessing the website from Utah," regardless of whether they're connecting through a VPN. The law also requires that any website with "a substantial portion of content harmful to minors" cannot assist or encourage users in using VPNs.
The law doesn't directly ban VPNs — instead, it puts websites on the hook for their users' VPN activity, and that's exactly what privacy and digital rights groups are most worried about. The Electronic Frontier Foundation issued a warning about the law back in April: "If a website can't accurately determine the true location of a VPN user, yet the law requires it to do so for all users in a given state, the legal risk could push websites to either block all known VPN IPs or require age verification from every visitor worldwide." The organization noted that this could mean millions of users, regardless of their actual location, being forced into invasive identity checks or outright blocked.
SB 73's road to implementation hasn't been smooth. The law was originally supposed to take effect in May but was delayed after Pornhub's parent company Aylo filed a lawsuit in federal court. Now Utah has once again agreed to postpone enforcement until the lawsuit is resolved. At Thursday's hearing, the presiding judge said he "couldn't promise when a ruling would come," according to Fox 13 News. That means this tug-of-war still has no clear timeline in sight.
Aylo and Pornhub have long been among the most vocal opponents of age verification laws in Utah and other states. The company says it's not against age verification in principle, but argues that the way US states are currently implementing it exposes users to "significant risks, including identity theft." In response to these regulations, Pornhub has chosen to block access outright in 25 states across the US rather than comply with verification requirements.
