SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — Senate Bill 18 (SB18) is a bill in the 2025 South Dakota Legislature which seeks to require age verification by websites containing material that is harmful to minors.

Putting it more bluntly, the goal is to age restrict access to websites hosting, manufacturing or providing pornography.

The two sides of the debate in this article are the ACLU of South Dakota, represented by ACLUSD Advocacy Manager Samantha Chapman, and Republican Rep. Bethany Soye, one of the legislators sponsoring the bill.

The ACLU has voiced opposition of the bill on a constitutional basis, while Soye has emphasized the importance of holding companies responsible.

The Bill

SB18 seeks to amend the current state law regarding obscene materials and minors.

Specifically, the bill adds “covered platform” as a definition, meaning; “a website that, in the regular course of the website’s trade or business, creates, hosts, or makes available content, of which a substantial portion is material that is harmful to minors.”

“Reasonable age verification” is also added as a definition, being; “any method by which a covered platform confirms that an individual attempting to access material that is harmful to minors is at least eighteen years of age by verifying:(a) A state-issued driver license or non-driver identification card;(b) A military identification card;(c) The individual’s bank account information;(d) A debit or credit card from the individual that requires the individual in ownership of the card to be at least eighteen years of age; or(e) Any other method that reliably and accurately determines if a user of a covered platform is a minor and prevents a minor from accessing the content of a covered platform.”

The final added definition is “substantial portion”, which is defined as; “an amount of content created by or hosted or otherwise made available on a website that is at least thirty-three and one-third percent of the total content created by or hosted or otherwise made available on the website.”

The bill also strikes the language, “within the meaning of subdivision (4) of this section,” from the definitions of ‘nudity’ and ‘sexual conduct’.

Subdivision (4) lays out qualifiers to the definition of “harmful to minors”, explaining that ‘nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sado-masochistic abuse,’ is considered harmful to minors if it is:(a) Predominantly appeals to the prurient, shameful, or morbid interest of minors; and(b) Is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable material for minors; and(c) Is without serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

The bill also lays out penalties for platforms that violate the law, and lay out actions that Attorney General would take.

The bill also notes that the penalties and actions would not apply to general search engines or internet service providers.

Soye started off her pitch for the bill explaining that in 2017 the House and Senate both passed a resolution calling porn a public health crisis. “But since that time, we haven’t really done anything about it,” she said. “Porn is so easy to find.”

It is Soye’s contention that porn is being marketed toward to children with the intent to get them addicted.

“Just for one story, I talked to a school bus driver for a public school and [they] said, ‘you know, all the kids have phones and they’re all sitting in the back of the bus watching porn’,” said Soye. “This isn’t Playboy like what people might have thought of porn 20 years ago — this is graphic violence. You know, this is rape. This is choking — people in pain. And it’s really distorting the hearts of our children and our teenagers and how they view relationships.”

Soye contends that a lot of teenagers today think you are supposed to choke someone while kissing them, “because that’s what they’ve seen in porn.”

The ACLU has expressed opposition to this bill on constitutional grounds.

“This is a bill that was similar to one that was introduced and defeated last year that essentially mandates adults provide a copy of their government issued I.D. or their credit card number or bank account number to identify to a website that they are over the age of 18 in an attempt to block minors from accessing pornography,” explained Chapman. “That is at least the stated goal of the bill’s sponsors.”

Chapman called this ID requirement to access a portion of the internet “just straight up government censorship.”

“Everyone has a right to free speech in this country, a nd while the Supreme Court has put some guardrails around what content can be and cannot be made available to minors — some obscene content is still protected speech,” said Chapman. “So in our opinion, by requiring adults to risk their privacy and put their personal identities out on the internet to access adult content, that is suppressing their free speech rights.”

Soye questioned this constitutional right to view pornography.

“I just have a hard time understanding how an adult accessing something is freedom of speech,” Soye said. “I think that’s kind of a misdirection to say, ‘well, accessing something is speech.’ It’s really the people who are putting it out there that are doing the speech.”

Chapman and Soye have common ground in that neither of them want children accessing pornography. They do however have differing ideas on how children should be kept from pornography.

While Soye is seeking to do this via legislation, Chapman highlighted the role of parents.

“I don’t want my kids seeing content that is inappropriate for them, but as a parent, I have a responsibility to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Chapman said. “There are already existing tools that parents can use to keep their kids safe online and these kind of laws are broad and sweeping.”

An early critique of the bill revolves around the inclusion of the definition “substantial portion” — the way that sites with 1/3 of their content being obscene would be identified as ones harmful to minors.

“I think about websites like Reddit, and think about websites like even, you know, X — even Netflix. I mean, what percentage of Netflix is movies are rated R,” asked Chapman. “I think that 33-and-one-third provision is really problematic — other reports where this has been litigated across the country have found that to be kind of an arbitrary number.”

This is actually another area where Chapman and Soye see eye to eye — even if from opposite sides of the aisle — even down to the vocabulary.

“From my view, it’s kind of an arbitrary standard,” said Soye of the 1/3 definition.

Soye explains that the 1/3 standard came from the similar bill passed in Louisiana. She indicated a willingness to debate inclusion of that section for something more related to “a regular course of business or trade.”

“Is it your purpose to put out porn,” Soye posited. “We’ll probably be debating that in the legislature.”

One major concern for Chapman is data safety for those adults who may put their sensitive information into these sites.

“Data breaches happen all the time,” Chapman said. “Although this bill does contain a provision that prohibits age verification sites or services from retaining this information, there’s nothing in this bill that prohibits them from selling that information.”

Chapman also expressed that due to the nature of the sites, these verification services may be prime targets for hackers who may want to steal information or use it to extort people such as politicians who have accessed porn sites.

We asked Soye about the concern around a lack of language prohibiting the sale of data. She indicated that she’s open to a discussion about improving the language of the bill.

“I definitely want to protect people’s information, and if [Chapman] has a suggestion for language, that would be better, I’m all for it,” Soye said.

The risk of a data breach or hack still remains, however, and many people may be uncomfortable with the idea of entering their driver’s license, bank info or other sensitive identifying material into the verification portal of a porn site considering security cannot be 100% guaranteed.

I would also point to the fact that in some states that passed similar legislation, adult websites like Pornhub have stopped providing their services at all,” said Chapman. “I think what’s going to happen will be a likely a chilling effect of websites and organizations who out of a fear of inadvertently triggering this this law or a lawsuit, might just cease to provide web-hosting services in South Dakota.”

Chapman went on to suggest that this might be the overall goal of some people behind these bills. “If the goal is to ultimately prevent all people from accessing pornography, that is a great concern. And honestly, that is one of my suspicions about legislation like this,” she said.

We asked Soye about this.

“Nobody’s trying to stop adults from accessing anything,” Soye said. “I really see that as a political stunt. [Pornhub] has made such a big deal about posting the video, like, “Oh, we’re not allowed to do this anymore” when they clearly are — you haven’t seen, you know, 20 porn companies say [they can’t operate in certain states], it’s just been one that’s really well known. — I think it’s a political stunt.”

The reference Soye makes to a video above is one which users in states which have passed age-verification bills are greeted with when trying to access Pornhub. The video tells users that legislators in their state have required Pornhub to verify their age before allowing access, and that Pornhub does not want to require users to do so. They explain their thoughts on the matter and that they have disabled access to the site in said state. The message ends urging the user to contact their state legislators.

One final point of contention for the ACLU is the potential lack of effectiveness. There are many porn sites out there, as well as services like VPNs, virtual private networks, which people can use to make it appear that they are in a different state or country. Chapman argues that these services make a bill such as this ineffective.

Soye countered by accepting that reality.

“That’s a valid point,” said Soye. “You’re not going to stop every 16, 17 year old. If they want to get on there, they’re going to do it.”

Instead, Soye said she is focused more on younger children.

“What I’m more concerned about is the five year old, the six year old that stumbles across this when they’re looking for a Disney show,” said Soye. “There is Disney themed porn because they’re trying to ensnare children, and a five year old is not going to go out and get a VPN and try to get around it. So I think it would still work at protecting young children.”

Senate Bill 18 has not yet been assigned to a committee.