Kansas’ new bill could block minors from viewing content about “homosexuality” online

Kansas’ Republican-controlled legislature has approved a bill that critics say could make it illegal for minors to access LGBTQ+ content on the Internet.

Similar to laws passed in Texas, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Utah, and Virginia in recent years, S.B. 394 is intended to prevent minors from accessing adult websites. It would require sites featuring content that is “harmful to minors” to verify that visitors in Kansas are 18 or older. Visitors to such sites would have to provide their government-issued IDs, sparking concerns about the potential misuse of people’s private information.

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“The information used to verify a person’s age could fall into the hands of entities who could use it for fraudulent purposes,” state Rep. Ken Collins, one of two Kansas Republicans who voted against the bill, said according to the Associated Press.

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Alongside privacy concerns, LGBTQ+ advocates and some Kansas Democrats worry that the state’s legal definition of material that is “harmful to minors” means the proposed law could be interpreted broadly to ban young people’s access to any LGBTQ+ content on the web. Under existing state law, material that is “harmful to minors” includes “sexual conduct” which is defined in part as “acts of masturbation, homosexuality, [and] sexual intercourse.”

Collins noted that S.B. 394 “leaves subjectivity as to what this bill bans,” while out Kansas Rep. Brandon Woodard (D) went further, arguing that under state law, “being who we are” as LGBTQ+ people is defined as harmful to minors.  

“Kansas residents may soon need their state ID’s [sic] to access content that depicts LGBTQ people,” trans activist and clinical instructor at Harvard Law’s Cyberlaw Clinic Alejandra Caraballo wrote in a Threads post about the bill.

S.B. 394 is even more restrictive than many similar laws passed in other states, whose age verification requirements apply to websites whose content is 1/3 adult-oriented, as Boing Boing notes. The proposed Kansas law would apply to sites with 25% adult content and would impose fines of up to $10,000 for sites that fail to verify Kansas users’ ages. It also allows parents of minors who access “harmful content” to sue for a minimum of $50,000 in damages.

The bill passed in the state’s House of Representatives Tuesday by a vote of 92–31 after unanimously passing the Kansas Senate last month. According to the AP, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) has not indicated whether she intends to sign the bill, but given the state legislature’s overwhelming support for S.B. 394, lawmakers would almost certainly have enough votes to override a veto.

While critics say the proposed law may violate the First Amendment’s free speech protections, a similar Texas law was upheld last year by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The three-judge panel ruled that Texas’s law did not violate the First Amendment because the state has a legitimate interest in banning minors from accessing pornography.