Utah Porn ‘Warning Label’ Requirement Becomes State Law This Week

A bill that passed the Utah state legislature last month that would require all porn, online or offline, to come with a “warning label” is now law in that state, even though Republican Governor Gary Herbert (pictured above) declined to put his signature on the bill. In Utah, as in many state governments, bills that pass a legislative deadline without a governor’s sign-off become law by default. That is exactly what happened with the porn “warning label” bill in Utah, according to a report by KUTV News in Salt Lake City.  Herbert signed 10 other, unrelated bills on Wednesday, and vetoed five others. But he offered no comment or stated reason as to why he failed to sign the porn warning label bill, KUTV reported. But because he also declined to veto the legislation, it automatically became Utah state law on Wednesday.  The final version of the bill that passed the Utah legislature was significantly scaled back from its original version. Initially, the bill would have required any content that depicts or even describes “nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse,” to be prefaced by a lengthy warning about porn’s supposed “negative impacts to brain development, emotional development, and the ability to maintain intimate relationships.”  But the required warning now must be affixed only to material deemed legally “obscene,” and will be only one sentence long.  The adult industry advocacy group Free Speech Coalition has already warned that if enacted, the law could quickly spark lawsuits under the First Amendment, which has generally been interpreted to prohibit “compelled” speech. In an earlier statement, FSC called the bill, even in its revised form, a “landmine of First Amendment issues.”  Under the bill, individual citizens may bring suits against porn sites that they believe have produced “obscene” material without a warning label. But because legal definition of “obscenity” is both vague and complex, and any particular work's "obscenity" can only be ascertained after a court hearing on the material in question, the bill is likely to set off an avalanche of lawsuits, FSC said in the statement. “Each case would have to be worked out through a lengthy and expensive legal process,” the FSC statement said. “The chilling effect on legal speech would be substantial.” Photo By Medill DC / Wikimedia Commons