Washington committee hears emotional testimony on HB 2112, a bill to require age checks for online adult sites

The House Consumer Protection and Business Committee held a public hearing Jan. 16 on House Bill 2112, a proposal that would require commercial websites with more than one-third ‘‘material harmful to minors’’ to implement age verification before granting access. The committee heard hours of testimony from the bill sponsor, technical experts, clinicians, industry representatives, civil-rights groups and dozens of public commenters.

Representative Marie Levitt, the bill—s prime sponsor, framed the measure as a child-protection step analogous to carding for alcohol and tobacco. "The bill before you is about keeping our children safe," Levitt said, citing pediatric concerns that early exposure to adult content correlates with higher rates of depression, anxiety and other harms. She said the bill narrowly targets commercial adult-content sites and includes a warning-label provision and a carve-out for bona fide news and public-interest material.

Megan Mulvihill, staff to the committee, summarized the bill—s mechanics: commercial entities would need to use reasonable age-verification methods (such as government-issued identification, commercially reasonable transactional-data methods, or third-party verification) and display Department of Health notices about youth health risks. The attorney general…