Updated Michigan Legislators Propose Online Porn Ban

HB 4938, introduced last week by six Republican members of the state House of Representatives, would “prohibit the distribution of certain material on the internet that corrupts the public morals.”

Pornography is the principal target, though the bill also seeks to criminalize depictions of transgender people.

The bill defines “pornographic material” broadly, to include “any content, digital, streamed, or otherwise distributed on the internet, the primary purpose of which is to sexually arouse or gratify, including videos, erotica, magazines, stories, manga, material generated by artificial intelligence, live feeds, or sound clips.”

The bill appears to exempt from the ban material protected by the First Amendment. Since pornography is constitutionally protected speech, this makes it unclear how the legislation could actually work.

According to the law, "prohibited material" means "material that at common law was not protected by adoption of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States respecting laws abridging freedom of speech or of the press."

XBIZ spoke with adult industry attorney and First Amendment expert Corey D. Silverstein to attempt to explain what this meant.

"I think they are trying to say that it would not be applicable to content not deemed as obscene under the Miller test," he said. "But it is written so poorly that there is some uncertainty as to their angle, which also makes the proposal both vague and ambiguous.

"At the same time, it could be another attempt to undercut and soften the Miller test, which we have been seeing in various other states throughout the country," he added.

The proposed penalties in the bill are severe, including up to 20 years in prison or a fine of up to $100,000, or both. It also allows for civil fines of up to $500,000 per violation.

The bill would require internet service providers to implement “mandatory filtering technology” to prevent Michigan residents from accessing “prohibited material” as defined in the bill, to “actively monitor and block known circumvention tools,” and to block access to specific websites on receipt of a court order.

The bill calls for the state attorney general to establish “a special internet content enforcement division” staffed with “digital forensics analysts, legal experts, cybersecurity specialists, and investigators” to enforce the proposed law.

Silverstein added that he doesn't believe the bill has much of a chance at being adopted.

"This bill has virtually no chance of going anywhere, given the current makeup of the Michigan legislature and its far-left Democrat governor," he said. "The bill is unconstitutional at every turn. Regardless, it is alarming that this type of thinking and government waste continues to occur."

The bill was referred to the Committee on Judiciary.

Talk of porn bans has increased in recent months. Earlier this year, Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah introduced federal legislation that would redefine almost all visual depictions of sex as obscene and therefore illegal, a goal that was also laid out in the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 policy blueprint, which has heavily guided the Trump administration’s agenda.

UPDATE: It's been reported that the "known circumvention tools" the bill seeks to block include VPNs, proxy servers, and encrypted tunneling methods. This would make it nearly impossible to access adult content online within the state.