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WASHINGTON — A Republican congressman has introduced legislation that would prevent U.S. courts from enforcing certain foreign laws that restrict speech protected by the First Amendment, potentially including foreign age verification requirements.
Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio introduced the Halting Overseas Mandates from Extraterritorially Reaching Onto National Territory (HOMEFRONT) Act of 2026, following similar legislation introduced last month by fellow Ohio Republican Rep. Michael Rulli.
The HOMEFRONT Act and Rulli’s Guaranteeing Rights Against Novel International Tyranny and Extortion (GRANITE) Act would prohibit U.S. courts from recognizing or enforcing foreign judgments, fines, orders or demands involving a “foreign censorship law.”
The GRANITE Act defines a “foreign censorship law” as any law of a foreign state that “has the primary purpose or substantial effect of restricting or penalizing expression, expressive conduct, or expressive association; targets expression, expressive conduct, or expressive association based on its content, viewpoint, or speaker identity … and would conflict with the protections of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution if recognized in the United States.”
The HOMEFRONT Act uses a similar definition, describing a “foreign censorship law” as “a law of a foreign country that imposes liability for conduct that would be protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States if the conduct occurred in the United States.” The bill goes further by specifically including laws involving online safety and “harmful” content.
Would Foreign AV Laws Be Thought of as Censorship?
The provisions leave open a question of particular interest to adult sites: whether age verification laws, including requirements under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) and the U.K.’s Online Safety Act (OSA), could qualify as foreign censorship laws.
If they do, either bill could potentially prevent U.S. courts from enforcing those laws against American-based companies, including through the collection of fines. Foreign governments and regulators would still be able to take action within their own jurisdictions, including blocking access to U.S.-based websites.
A statement from Davidson’s office specifically cited the OSA and U.K. media regulator Ofcom, saying, “The UK’s Online Safety Act, which entered into force last year, purports to give Ofcom jurisdiction over essentially any online service in the world, whether based in the UK or not.”
The statement pointed to Ofcom’s issuance of 197 information requests to businesses with U.S. addresses as evidence that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act provides foreign governments with overly broad protection from lawsuits. Davidson said, “Foreign governments have no business policing the speech of American citizens. Foreign regulators are using fines and legal threats to pressure American companies into censoring speech protected by the First Amendment.”
Neither the GRANITE Act nor the HOMEFRONT Act specifically says whether age verification laws are included in or excluded from the definition of “foreign censorship.” Neither Rulli’s nor Davidson’s office has responded to questions about whether the legislation is intended to cover AV laws.
That leaves U.S. companies potentially able to argue that laws such as the OSA and DSA fall within the bills’ definitions. Any such determination would likely require a U.S. court to apply the legal standard established in the Supreme Court’s decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton.
In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that “the First Amendment leaves undisturbed States’ traditional power to prevent minors from accessing speech that is obscene from their perspective. That power includes the power to require proof of age before an individual can access such speech.” The court upheld state age verification requirements when they only “incidentally” burden adults’ protected speech.
Foreign laws meeting that standard could therefore potentially fall outside the definition of censorship under the GRANITE and HOMEFRONT Acts. Whether they do would ultimately depend on how individual courts interpret the legislation and the specific law at issue.
Industry attorney Corey Silverstein said, “The argument for HOMEFRONT protection becomes stronger where a foreign law reaches broader categories of lawful expression, employs an expansive definition of ‘harmful content,’ imposes particularly burdensome or privacy-invasive verification requirements, or otherwise restricts adult access more substantially than the Texas law upheld in Paxton. The analysis would therefore remain law-specific and fact-specific.”
Attorney Lawrence Walters offered a different concern, noting that many foreign regulatory frameworks affecting U.S. adult sites, including the OSA and DSA, may not be narrowly written enough to qualify as laws that only incidentally burden protected speech.
“They often rest on broader categories such as ‘harmful content,’ pornography definitions that reach constitutionally protected adult speech, extraterritorial information demands and compelled identity collection,” Walters said. “HOMEFRONT’s express inclusion of ‘online safety,’ ‘harmful content’ and ‘compelled disclosure of user information’ makes it easier to argue that those regimes are precisely what the bill is intended to cover.”
Similarities and Differences
Although the GRANITE Act and HOMEFRONT Act share the same general objective, their language differs in several important areas. Walters described them as “close cousins, not twins.”
“HOMEFRONT is the more aggressive and more explicit of the two on ‘online safety’-style regulation, including the kinds of extraterritorial AV and data-demand orders U.S. adult platforms have already received from foreign regulators,” Walters said. “HOMEFRONT also goes further operationally, including barring U.S. government cooperation and extradition in covered cases.”
Silverstein likewise identified several areas in which HOMEFRONT goes beyond the GRANITE proposal.
“It places the burden on the party seeking enforcement, creates separate due-process and Section 230 defenses and authorizes injunctive relief, attorneys fees and $25,000 in statutory damages,” Silverstein said.
Those provisions would require a U.S. court to determine that a foreign court’s exercise of jurisdiction satisfies due-process requirements under the U.S. Constitution. The bill would also provide an additional defense for interactive computer services by reaffirming Section 230 protections when foreign jurisdiction is involved.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act generally protects interactive computer services, including adult platforms, from liability for content uploaded by users, subject to exceptions involving unlawful promotion or facilitation of prostitution or sex trafficking.
“Even if a foreign judgment survives HOMEFRONT’s First Amendment analysis, a domestic court could not enforce it against an interactive computer service unless the party seeking enforcement proves that the judgment would also be consistent with Section 230,” Silverstein said.
An exemption for interactive computer services created a separate issue last year when enforcement of an Ohio age verification law encountered a legal obstacle. Pornhub argued that the law did not apply because it qualifies as an interactive computer service. Ohio lawmakers are now considering legislation that would remove adult content providers from that exemption.
For platforms that carry user-generated adult material, Walters said the HOMEFRONT Act would offer “significantly clearer protection” than the First Amendment definition contained in GRANITE alone.
“It still would not cover material the platform itself created, and it would not automatically invalidate every foreign age verification law after Paxton,” Walters said. “But it would make it much harder to use American courts to enforce extraterritorial publisher liability that Section 230 already forbids.”
Rulli and Davidson are not the only lawmakers pursuing federal legislation aimed at protecting U.S. companies from what they characterize as “foreign censorship.” Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri said last year that he planned to introduce similar legislation. At the state level, Wyoming considered its own version of the GRANITE Act earlier this year. The measure passed the state House but did not advance in the Senate.
Officials in the Trump administration have also repeatedly described European online-content regulations as threats to free speech. The administration has gone as far as imposing visa restrictions on EU figures it views as involved in “efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.” That position could signal potential administration support if either the GRANITE Act or HOMEFRONT Act moves forward.
Both bills have been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.
