Utahns are free to continue to use VPNs – for now.
A federal judge issued a Sept. 24 injunction blocking a Utah law requiring companies to verify the age of any users physically located in Utah, even if they are using a VPN. The state had already agreed not to enforce the rule pending the judge's ruling.
The main purpose of a virtual private network is to secure and encrypt an individual's traffic on the web, as well as change the user's location.
The parent company of PornHub, Aylo, sued Utah in May ahead of the law going into effect. In his order on the injunction, federal district judge David Barlow agreed with the company that it would be nearly impossible for it to follow the age-verification law because it would require the company to "geolocate its website users with perfection to avoid liability."
It is "undisputed" that technology capable of perfect geolocation does not exist yet, the judge said, and ruled that Aylo is likely to succeed in its case since it has shown the law does irreparable harm to the company.
Utah Attorney General Derek Brown argued that the state is not looking for perfection, but that companies make a "reasonable effort" to determine whether their users are in Utah. In Judge Barlow's reasoning, the court is required to "analyze the statutory text the Legislature passed into law, not just the Attorney General's proposed enforcement of it."
The law in question is the latest version of the state's 2023 law requiring adult content websites to verify the ages of Utah users. Rather than comply, some sites, including PornHub, chose to block access for the entire state. Soon after the law went into effect, Utah saw a spike in Google searches for how to get a VPN, which disguises a user's location and can act as a workaround to restrictions by changing the user's IP address.
The 2026 update also bans adult content websites from sharing instructions on getting and using a VPN, which raised First Amendment concerns among digital rights advocates. Additionally, it created a 2% tax on transactions made on pornography websites.
After Thursday's ruling, Utah's law will remain enjoined until a judge rules on its constitutionality.
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