- Federal Judge Barlow issued a preliminary injunction blocking Utah’s SB 73, which aimed to heavily regulate VPN use on adult websites.
- The court ruled that requiring platforms to perfectly geolocate or block VPN users is a technical impossibility that unfairly burdens out-of-state users.
- The legal challenge was spearheaded by adult entertainment giant Aylo, with strong backing and advocacy from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
State lawmakers love trying to rewrite how the internet works, but a federal court just reminded Utah that you cannot legislate technical miracles into existence. In a major victory for digital rights advocates and privacy-conscious netizens, a federal judge has blocked Utah’s highly controversial SB 73. The draconian law effectively attempted to ban adult websites from allowing Virtual Private Network (VPN) traffic unless those sites could magically peer through the encryption to locate the user.
The preliminary injunction, handed down by Judge Barlow, halts a law that internet safety advocates warn would set a dangerous precedent for global digital privacy. Designed as part of Utah’s aggressive push to mandate online age verification, SB 73 went so far as to target VPNs and traffic-masking tools, making Utah the first state in the nation to legally penalize websites for failing to pierce the privacy armor of their visitors.
The Impossible Demand
At the heart of the legal battle is a fundamental misunderstanding of networking technology. Under SB 73, adult websites faced strict liability if even a single Utah resident managed to bypass their age gates using a VPN. To avoid catastrophic fines, platforms like Pornhub (owned by plaintiff Aylo) would have to either verify the age of every single visitor worldwide or achieve perfect geolocation tracking.
As the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) pointed out, and the court agreed, “geolocation perfection” is a technical impossibility in an era where encryption and VPNs are standard security tools. Judge Barlow’s ruling emphasized that Utah’s law likely violates the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause by placing an unconstitutional burden on out-of-state businesses and users. Because a website cannot know with absolute certainty where a masked connection originates, the law essentially forces global platforms to restructure their entire operations around Utah’s hyper-specific rules.
What’s Next for Digital Privacy
The ruling marks a temporary but massive sigh of relief for tech privacy advocates who have watched state-level age-verification laws metastasize across the country. While Utah’s Division of Consumer Protection had hoped to implement these rules as early as October 2026, the injunction puts a full stop on enforcement pending further legal proceedings. For now, the internet remains a place where state borders cannot easily overwrite basic mathematics and cryptographic realities.
Source: Original Coverage
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