PIERRE, S.D. — South Dakota lawmakers on Friday voted down an attempt to filter porn in the state and charge users a $20 adult entertainment access fee.
On a 7-4 vote today, legislators toppled another version of the Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation Prevention Act, which is being shopped around by its proponent, Chris Sevier.
House Bill 1154 raised serious concerns with lobbyists representing South Dakota retailers and telecommunication companies, who opposed the measure in a meeting of the House Judiciary Committee, according to the Argus Leader.
At the meeting Dan Nelson, a lobbyist for regional cable and internet service provider Midco, said a similar bill was withdrawn in North Dakota’s state legislature before it saw the light of day.
“The people who allowed themselves to be affiliated with it were humiliated and remorseful,” said Nelson, according to the Argus Leader.
Just this week in Hawaii, the state Legislature was weighing two similar bills such as the one presented in South Dakota by Sevier.
Sevier’s template for legislation has drawn criticism from industry trade groups Free Speech Coalition and APAC, as well as the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Even the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, an anti-pornography advocacy group, demanded in 2017 that Sevier stop claiming it supported his work.