TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody has filed a motion asking a federal court to halt the Free Speech Coalition (FSC) lawsuit challenging HB 3, the state's age verification law, pending the Supreme Court's ruling in the Free Speech Coalition-led challenge to Texas’ age verification law, HB 1181.
The motion requests that the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida stay the lawsuit while still allowing HB 3 to take effect on Jan. 1.
"Nor would a stay, which would permit HB 3 to go into effect on January 1, be unfair to Plaintiffs," Moody writes in her motion. "Both the Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court have allowed Texas’s statute to remain in effect while the Supreme Court is considering its constitutionality."
Adult industry attorney and First Amendment expert Corey D. Silverstein, who filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Woodhull Freedom Foundation in the Texas case, Free Speech Coalition et al. v. Paxton, told XBIZ that granting the motion would amount to weaponizing the FSC lawsuit against adult sites operating in Florida by allowing the state to penalize them without due process.
"It’s absurd," Silverstein said. "The attorney general is trying to take advantage of the situation. The appropriate thing here would be for the parties to agree on a temporary injunction against HB 3, as well as staying the lawsuit until such time as the Supreme Court issues its Texas decision. She wants to have her cake and eat it too."
Silverstein added that if the motion were passed without an injunction against the law, it could create a separate due process violation.
"Florida lawmakers are ignoring the constitution, just as in other states that have passed these laws, as well as ignoring existing case precedent that these laws are unconstitutional," he said.
Moody is one of several state attorneys general who filed amicus briefs with the Supreme Court supporting Texas AG Ken Paxton. The Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments for the Texas case on Jan. 15.
As XBIZ reported earlier this month, the ramifications of HB 3 are already being felt, with Aylo set to geo-block Pornhub in Florida on Jan. 1.
FSC declined to comment as the case is in active litigation.