On Monday afternoon, it seemed like the bipartisan coalition seeking to enact age verification for pornography sites in South Dakota was finally going to succeed. But then, it all fell apart again.
The members of the state Senate who supported HB 1257 successfully “smoked out” the bill and brought it to the floor after four Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee tabled it last week. But as the bill moved to a floor vote, Senate President Pro Tempore Lee Schoenbeck succeeded in adopting an amendment to the bill that would merely study the issue over the summer, effectively killing the legislation.
There remains hope that the bill could pass this year. The legislation now heads to a conference committee, and it could be revived. But the painstaking process the bill has undergone is baffling for a topic that has broad bipartisan support, especially in a state dominated by Republicans.
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Ian Fury, a spokesman for Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD), affirmed that the governor is monitoring the bill and supports protecting children from pornography.
“Governor Noem obviously supports protecting our kids from being exposed to pornography,” Fury said. “The bill isn’t dead — it’s going to conference committee after being amended twice just on the Senate floor. We continue to monitor this rapidly changing legislation.”
Opponents of the legislation have repeatedly tried to claim that the bill will not be effective or will open up the state to a bevy of lawsuits it cannot hope to win. Schoenbeck, in pushing the poison pill amendment, argued that opposition from the South Dakota chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union should be considered in whether or not the bill should be passed.
“It is important to fight this scourge on young people. We want to do this the right way because the alternative is you fail and you fund the ACLU,” Schoenbeck said, according to the South Dakota Scout.
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Among the ACLU’s concerns is that the bill will lead to PornHub shutting down access to the site in South Dakota and prevent people who do not have government IDs from accessing pornographic websites. The ACLU lists these under “unintended consequences.” In other words, the ACLU is concerned that fewer people will watch pornography.
One wonders if the Republicans stonewalling the bill are themselves worried about their ability to access PornHub.
