Why it matters: A Kansas woman is suing several porn sites after her 14-year-old son found an old laptop and used it to browse adult content. The suits claim that the sites violated the state’s age-verification laws by allowing the minor access.

Kansas is one of the 20+ states that have current or upcoming laws requiring porn sites to verify users’ ages.

The Kansas law requires any site with over 25% of its content deemed “harmful to minors,” which covers nudity and sexual content, to verify the age of visitors using a commercially available database or another commercially reasonable method of age and identity verification.

As reported by 404 Media, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) and a Kansas law firm filed four lawsuits on behalf of a minor child, the child’s mother, and a friend of the family against Chaturbate, Jerkmate, Titan Websites, and Techpump Solutions, also known as Superporn.com.

According to a statement from NCOSE, the mother had been diligent in monitoring her 14-year-old son’s devices to prevent his exposure to harmful material during “this important developmental stage of his life.”

In August 2024, the boy found an old laptop belonging to a friend of his mother that had been stored and forgotten about in a closet. It was still in working order, and the son used it to access the internet and search for hardcore pornography.

The suits allege that the sites should have had age-verification measures in place to comply with a Kansas law implemented in July 2024, which allows individuals – including parents or guardians – to take legal action against commercial entities, such as websites, that permit access without verifying users’ ages.

Chaturbate has an age-verification mechanism, but it can be easily manipulated and that does not satisfy Kansas’ law, according to the suit. Its parent company, Multi Media LLC, called the suit “completely baseless,” something it told the plaintiff when the company was contacted last November.

The complaint claims that as a result of accessing the sites, the boy has suffered “pain, suffering, disability, disfigurement, and mental anguish; psychological injury; past and future loss of enjoyment and pleasure of living; and past and future expenses of necessary medical care and treatment.”

The NCOSE says these are the first lawsuits in the US that challenge alleged violators of age verification laws. The organization has previously helped with lawsuits against porn site Xvideos. It also aided with a case against Twitter over allegations it violated the federal sex trafficking statute.