Ohio‘s New Porn ID Law Takes Effect, Raising First Amendment Concerns
COLUMBUS, OH – Ohio’s law requiring age verification for access to online pornography went into effect Tuesday, September 10, making it the 25th state to enact such legislation. The law mandates that websites containing explicit material verify the age of users before granting access, a measure proponents say will protect minors from harmful content, while opponents argue it infringes on constitutionally protected speech and raises privacy concerns.
The legislation arrives after previous attempts to pass age-verification laws as standalone bills failed in the Ohio legislature, including Senate Bill 212 in 2024 and House Bill 84 in 2025. The current law was added as an amendment to a separate bill concerning oversight of weight-loss drugs. It requires websites to use a third-party vendor to verify a user’s age, typically through a form of identification.
The American civil Liberties Union of Ohio (ACLU) has criticized the law, stating it creates a “barrier to constitutionally protected speech” and finds the term “harmful to juveniles” to be subjective. “This law will not protect children, but it will chill protected speech and create significant privacy risks for all Ohioans,” the ACLU said in a statement.
Conversely,the Center for Christian Virtue supports the law,arguing it will “help prevent minors from viewing explicit content online,and protect them from an industry that is internationally known for child exploitation.”
Ohio now joins 24 other states with similar laws, including Alabama, Arizona (effective Sept. 26, 2025), Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri (effective thirty days after final rule publication in the Missouri Register), Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming, according to the Free Speech Coalition.