COLUMBUS, Ohio—Lawmakers in the Ohio state legislature have reintroduced the so-called Innocence Act in this legislative session. The Innocence Act, House Bill 84, is an extreme age verification measure specifically targeting adult entertainment platforms with criminal and civil penalties for non-compliance or failure to meet requirements.
Introduced by conservative Republican state Reps. Steve Demetriou and Josh Williams, House Bill (HB) 84 is a redux of a similar bill introduced in the previous session that failed to advance and died in the legislative calendar. Other sponsors backing the bill are predominately Republicans and two Democrats, per The Plain Dealer.
HB 84 was recently introduced and presented before the House Technology and Innovation Committee.
No vote has been held yet, meaning the bill will go through a rigorous markup process before even being considered for a vote before a criminal justice committee, the whole House, and the Senate. GOP Gov. Mike DeWine is expected to sign the bill if it reaches his desk this year.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, also a Republican, openly endorsed the Innocence Act last legislative session, with the support of religious conservative organizations and other hard-right groups tied to anti-pornography efforts backed by Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, the Age Verification Providers Association and others.
This year’s version of the Innocence Act is virtually the same. Demetriou and Williams present the bill as a “reasonable” age verification measure. However, it levies felony criminal charges on the operators of adult entertainment websites if they fail to comply or meet the standards laid out by the bill.
HB 84 “[p]rovides that organizations that sell, deliver, furnish, disseminate, provide, exhibit, or present any material or performance that is obscene or harmful to juveniles, as well as the organization’s officer, agent, or employee, may be convicted for that criminal conduct,” reads a summary of the bill by the Ohio Legislative Service Commission.
The bill summary adds that it “[c]reates the offense of failure to verify age of a person accessing materials that are obscene or harmful to juveniles and the offense of use of false identifying information to access materials that are obscene or harmful to juveniles.” Violations would carry a fourth-degree or third-degree felony conviction.
Organizations in Ohio opposed to the legislation this year include the same groups as last year.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio has announced its opposition to House Bill 84. According to The Plain Dealer, ACLU lobbyist Gary Daniels called the bill “nebulous” and Lou Tobin, the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association, said the bill has “possible First Amendment implications.”
