KANSAS CITY, Kan. — A federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit alleging that adult site SuperPorn violated Kansas’ age verification law, citing lack of jurisdiction after similarly dismissing two related cases earlier this year.
As XBIZ reported last year, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), a conservative anti-pornography organization, brought lawsuits against four adult sites on behalf of a 14-year-old Kansas resident and their mother. The suits alleged that the teen accessed content on the sites without their age being verified.
In February, Judge Holly Teeter of the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas dismissed two of the suits, citing lack of jurisdiction. A third case targeted Multi Media LLC, which operates Chaturbate, but after the judge granted the defendant’s motion to compel arbitration, the plaintiff filed a notice of dismissal, ending the action.
The fourth and final case targeted Pump Lab SL, operator of SuperPorn.com. The plaintiff deployed multiple arguments for establishing jurisdiction, but Teeter rejected those arguments in her ruling on Monday.
“Defendant admits that its website was accessible in Kansas but argues that it did not intentionally direct its activities at Kansas,” the ruling notes. “Defendant contends it merely operates a website that is universally accessible.”
This constitutes the crux of the jurisdiction issue. The plaintiff argued that the fact that the website is accessible from anywhere should not preclude the court from exercising jurisdiction in Kansas, and pointed to SuperPorn's use of CDNs and cookies, its knowledge of user location and its ad revenues. However, the court found those factors insufficient to establish appropriate jurisdiction.
"Still missing is intentional conduct targeting Kansas and the substantial harmful effects from which Plaintiff’s claims arise or relate to," the opinion reads. "The Court finds that it lacks specific personal jurisdiction over Defendant."
The ruling acknowledges “the tension inherent in a doctrine premised on geographic limitations and the peculiarly nonterritorial quality of the internet,” then concludes, “The Court has made its best effort to navigate this developing area of the law.”
In a news alert providing analysis of the case, industry attorney Corey Silverstein observed, "This decision reflects an increasingly important trend in internet-jurisdiction cases: courts are distinguishing between technologies that make a website universally accessible and conduct that intentionally targets a specific forum."
Meanwhile, the state of Kansas itself is suing SARJ LLC, alleging that the company’s adult websites — including metart.com, sexart.com, and vivthomas.com — have failed to implement age verification as mandated by the same state law that was at issue in the NCOSE-backed suits. SARJ has claimed that the jurisdiction issue that resulted in dismissal of the first two NCOSE-backed suits applies to its case as well. However, it remains to be seen whether the court will apply the same jurisprudence to a suit brought by the state.