A Kansas mother who left an old laptop in a closet is suing multiple porn sites because her teenage son visited them on that computer.
The complaints, filed last week in the U.S. District Court for Kansas, allege that the teen had “unfettered access” to a variety of adult streaming sites, and accuses the sites of providing inadequate age verification as required by Kansas law.
A press release from the National Center for Sexual Exploitation, which is acting as co-counsel in this lawsuit, names Chaturbate, Jerkmate, Techpump Solutions (Superporn.com), and Titan Websites (Hentai City) as defendants in four different lawsuits.
According to the complaints, the mother, “Jane Doe,” put an old laptop in a closet at home and forgot about it. Her son, 14-year-old “Q.R.,” found it in working condition. He visited Chaturbate 30 times between August and October 2024, the complaint against Chaturbate says. “Jane Doe was vigilant in monitoring Q.R.’s devices to prevent his exposure to harmful material during this important developmental stage of his life,” NCOSE wrote in its press release. NCOSE is a conservative anti-porn lobbying group that’s gone after adult material on Reddit and Twitter in the past, and has supported efforts to ban Pornhub entirely.
In April of last year, Kansas passed one of the most extreme age verification bills into law. “Any commercial entity that knowingly shares or distributes material that is harmful to minors on a website and such material appears on 25% or more of the webpages viewed on such website in any calendar month” falls under the purview of this law, sites that don’t comply could be fined up to $10,000 for each violation, and parents could sue for damages of at least $50,000.
Kansas criminal law defines “material harmful to minors” as involving “nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement or sadomasochistic abuse.”
Emanuel Maiberg
Benjamin Bull, General Counsel for NCOSE, told local news outlet KAKE that he hopes this lawsuit will “open up the floodgates” of similar age verification based challenges in other states. Eighteen states, including almost all of the U.S. South, have age verification laws in place, according to the Free Speech Coalition, an adult industry advocacy organization. Free speech advocates and internet safety experts say these laws are archaic, ineffective for actually controlling childrens’ access to adult materials, and chilling for adults’ rights to view adult material.
Last year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Chaturbate and other porn sites, accusing them of not complying with Texas' age verification law; Chaturbate paid Texas $675,000 to settle.
The plaintiff in these lawsuits against Chaturbate and others are asking for at least $75,000 in damages in each complaint, for “actual damages resulting from Q.R.’s access to material that is harmful to minors, including but not limited to past medical expenses, future medical expenses, past and future lost services and disability, past and future pain, suffering, and disability.” According to the law, each violation could cost the porn sites $50,000.
