The War on Porn Regular Updates about the Assault on The Adult Industry
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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — In Missouri’s capital, one lawmaker is trying once again to put a moral warning label on people’s browsing habits. A state representative has filed a bill that would force adult websites to post stark notices about supposed physical, mental and social harms tied to pornography — even though a federal court has already pushed back on this kind of requirement.
The measure, HB 1831, comes from Rep. Sherri Gallick, a Republican member of the Missouri House of Representatives. Her proposal is one of two fresh attempts to lock age verification for adult sites into state law, effectively turning what the attorney general tried to do unilaterally into a legislative mandate. That earlier move from the attorney general has already stirred controversy and could still end up in court. The second AV bill, HB 1878, was introduced by Rep. Renee Reuter.
While HB 1878 tracks closely with the wave of age verification laws already on the books in other states, Gallick’s HB 1831 goes further. It adds a requirement that adult sites display a prominent notice declaring, “Pornography is potentially biologically addictive, is proven to harm human brain development, desensitizes brain reward circuits, increases conditioned responses, and weakens brain function. Exposure to this content is associated with low self-esteem and body image, eating disorders, impaired brain development, and other emotional and mental illnesses. Pornography increases the demand for prostitution, child exploitation, and child pornography.” It reads less like a neutral disclosure and more like a manifesto, which is part of what makes it so legally fraught.
On top of that, the bill insists that every page of an adult site carry a footer pointing users to a helpline “for individuals and family members facing mental health or substance use disorders.” The message is clear: visiting an adult website is being framed as behavior that belongs in the same bucket as addiction and crisis.
If the language feels familiar, it’s because it is. The text is lifted directly from Texas’ HB 1181, the age verification law that eventually became the center of the U.S. Supreme Court case Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. That case turned into a major turning point, opening the door for enforcement of age verification laws across the country after the Court upheld the Texas statute.
But there’s a twist that matters here. The version of the Texas law that survived at the Supreme Court did not include those “health warning” provisions. They were already stripped out by the United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which upheld a lower court’s injunction and agreed that forcing websites to post such statements amounted to unconstitutional compelled speech.
With that precedent hanging in the air, it’s hard to see a clear path forward for HB 1831 in its current form. Any serious attempt to move it could be walking straight into a legal buzzsaw.
