Lawmakers move bills aimed at stopping minors’ access to obscene materials, porn

This story was originally published by Iowa Capital Dispatch.

Lawmakers advanced two measures Wednesday in the Iowa House dealing with minors’ exposure to obscene materials — one raising penalties for the distribution of obscene materials to minors, and the other requiring age verification for access to websites with pornography.

Rep. Skyler Wheeler, R-Hull, linked the age verification measure to other efforts in recent years to restrict children’s access to obscene materials — the highest-profile measure being a 2023 law restricting books in school libraries that contain obscene or sexually explicit material.

“We’ve been working the last couple years to really protect our kids,” Wheeler said. “There’s a lot of stuff thrown at them … that’s pretty egregious.”

The bills discussed in subcommittee meetings Wednesday do not contain measures related to books or school content, but are aimed at preventing minors from accessing or being shown obscene materials. House File 64 raises the penalty for knowingly disseminating or exhibiting obscene materials to a minor from a serious misdemeanor to a Class D felony charge, punishable by up to five years in prison and a maximum fine of $10,245.

Jeff Pitts with the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition said the organization supports the bill as people who “put pornographic images in front of the eyes of kids should be punished appropriately.”

But some advocates like Lisa Davis-Cook with the Iowa Association for Justice said raising the penalties in these cases could have unintended consequences — specifically because the legislation does not contain carveouts for minors who are the ones showing obscene materials to their peers.

“Kids do stupid stuff,” Davis-Cook said. “And sometimes you’ve got kids sharing things that they shouldn’t be sharing, and we don’t want them to be sharing. But with increasing penalties for things like this, we worry about kids getting felonies, ending up on the sex offender registry — which will have lasting effects on their lives — and so we just want to be careful with who this is targeting.”

Rep. Megan Srinivas, D-Des Moines, said she was “hesitant” to move the legislation forward without an amendment, saying she would support raising penalties for adults but that the current language could have lifelong impacts on people who make “stupid, simple mistakes as children.”

Rep. Henry Stone, R-Forest City, said he plans to propose an amendment “tiering up” punishments on the dissemination of these materials as a way to address concerns brought up with the measure.

“We are cognizant of those concerns, of kids, unfortunately in this day and age, of kids being kids, getting caught up,” Stone said.

Internet Age Verification

House File 62 would require distributors of obscene materials on the internet, like pornography websites, to implement “reasonable age verification methods.” The legislation hold commercial entities in violation of restricting minors’ access to obscene materials civilly liable.

Multiple advocates with religious organizations spoke in support of the measure, saying the government has a duty to protect children from access to pornography. Ryan Benn with the Family Leader, a conservative Christian organization, said 19 states have implemented age verification requirements, and “Iowa should be the 20th.”

“I think it’s fair to say that online porn providers shouldn’t have a free rein to hurt kids,” Benn said. “We need to modernize our laws to keep up with technology, and unfortunately, we’re about 20 years behind. We cannot allow another generation of kids to have their views of women and sex shaped by seeing videos on the internet.”

While speakers representing telecommunications organizations said they were not opposed to the intent of the legislation, some speakers asked for amendments to clarify the companies that would be held liable. Logan Murray with the Technology Association of Iowa asked for lawmakers to clarify what a “reasonable” age verification process would entail, as well as ensuring that websites distributing legitimate content — like medical information websites — would not be at risk for civil liability under the bill.

Murray also said lawmakers should look at laws in states like Texas and Louisiana targeting online distributors of obscene material that set thresholds of one-third of the website’s content being obscene material to require age verification. Technology organizations also recommended adding the one-third obscene content requirement when a similar measure was discussed during the 2024 legislative session to ensure that social media, news or other websites containing information would not be targeted by the measure.

Srinivas said that she appreciated the bill’s definition of obscene material required that the matter “lacks serious literary, scientific, political or artistic value,” meaning that access to websites with medical information or other subjects would not be impacted by the measure. The representative supported the measure if amendments are made using suggestions from technology groups.

“If we can maybe utilize some of the experiences from Texas, Louisiana and Utah to help create that threshold … I think this is worth moving forward,” Srinivas said.

Both bills were sent to the House Judiciary Committee for further consideration.

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