Alabama Age Verification Law: HB 164 Requirements Explained

Alabama's age-verification law for adult content, House Bill 164 of the 2024 Regular Session, took effect October 1, 2024 and is codified in Title 8, Chapter 19G of the Code of Alabama 1975. Section 8-19G-3 requires a commercial entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes sexual material harmful to minors through an adult website to use a reasonable age-verification method. The same act added a separate 10 percent tax on certain adult-content gross receipts, codified at Section 8-19G-10, which did not take effect until September 1, 2025.

What Alabama's Age-Verification Law Requires

House Bill 164, enacted during Alabama's 2024 Regular Session as Act 2024-97 and effective October 1, 2024, is codified in Title 8, Chapter 19G of the Code of Alabama 1975. Section 8-19G-3(a) provides:

Any commercial entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes sexual material harmful to minors through an adult website shall use a reasonable age-verification method to provide reasonable assurance that individuals under 18 years of age cannot access the material harmful to minors.

Section 8-19G-2 supplies the operative definitions. An adult website is a website, application, or digital or virtual platform a substantial portion of whose content is sexual material harmful to minors, and "substantial portion" means more than 33 1/3 percent. "Harmful to minors" carries the meaning given in Section 13A-12-200.1. Section 8-19G-3(b) exempts a bona fide news-gathering organization from the requirement. Section 8-19G-9 separately requires a covered site to display prescribed state health warnings and a federal substance-abuse helpline notice, in 14 point font or greater.

The 10 Percent Adult-Content Tax

Alongside the age-verification duty, the same act added Section 8-19G-10, which levies a 10 percent tax on the gross receipts of a commercial entity operating an adult website for sales, distributions, memberships, subscriptions, performances, and other content amounting to material harmful to minors "that is produced, sold, filmed, generated, or otherwise based in this state."

That in-state nexus matters, and it is easy to miss. The Section 8-19G-3 verification duty turns on publishing covered material to Alabama users, but the tax base is limited to covered content produced, sold, filmed, generated, or otherwise based in Alabama. An out-of-state operator can therefore owe the verification duty without plainly falling inside the tax at all. The two obligations also started at different times: Section 14 of the act set the tax provision's effective date at September 1, 2025, while the remaining sections took effect October 1, 2024. The State Department of Revenue collects the tax in the same time and manner as state sales and use taxes, and the proceeds are distributed to the Department of Mental Health. No case testing the tax provision's constitutionality separately from the age-verification mandate was found in this research.

Enforcement and How Sites Have Responded

Alabama enforces HB 164 through its consumer-protection framework, giving the Attorney General's office authority to act against noncompliant sites. Rather than build age-verification systems, major platforms including Aylo, Pornhub's parent company, chose to geo-block Alabama IP addresses entirely, consistent with the pattern Aylo has followed in most states with similar laws. That is the company's own business decision. Alabama's statute requires a covered site to verify a visitor's age; it does not require the site to block Alabama traffic, and it does not make adult content illegal to view once a visitor is verified as an adult.

No Legal Challenge Found

This research did not find a lawsuit challenging HB 164 on First Amendment or other constitutional grounds. NetChoice's own litigation tracker, checked directly, lists no Alabama entry among the states where it or its members have sued over an age-verification law. Alabama news coverage of the law's rollout, including reporting on Pornhub's IP-block response, likewise does not mention a pending case. That absence is a researched finding as of this writing, not a guarantee that no challenge exists or could be filed later.

Alabama's Separate App Store Accountability Act

Alabama also enacted a second, unrelated age-related law: House Bill 161, an App Store Accountability Act, enacted as Act 2026-59 in February 2026 and codified in Title 8, Chapter 19K of the Code of Alabama 1975. Unlike HB 164, which targets adult websites directly, HB 161 places age-verification and parental-consent duties on app-store operators and app developers. It takes effect January 1, 2027, and app store providers must bring accounts that already exist into compliance before October 1, 2027.

Enforcement runs exclusively through the Attorney General. Section 8-19K-11(a) deems any knowing or reckless violation of the chapter a deceptive trade practice actionable under Chapter 19 of Title 8, then provides that the Attorney General "shall have the exclusive jurisdiction to bring an action pursuant to Chapter 19," with a civil penalty of up to $7,500 per violation plus reasonable attorney fees and court costs. The chapter creates no private right of action; subsection (d)'s statement that the section "does not preclude any other available remedy at law or equity" is a savings clause, not a grant of one. Alabama was, by most accounts, the fourth state to enact this type of law. See the App Store Accountability Act overview for how Alabama's law compares to Utah's, Texas's, and Louisiana's.

Where Alabama's Law Fits Nationally

Alabama's law follows the same basic model the Supreme Court reviewed and upheld in Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton, 606 U.S. 461 (2025), decided June 27, 2025: a commercial entity that publishes material harmful to minors online must use reasonable age verification. The Court held that this type of law triggers, and survives, intermediate scrutiny, not the stricter standard adult-industry plaintiffs had argued for. That decision did not directly involve Alabama and does not by itself resolve any future challenge to HB 164, but it is the controlling precedent any such challenge would have to overcome, and it is a plausible part of why no challenge to HB 164 has surfaced in this research.

Verified against the enrolled texts of Alabama House Bill 164 (Act 2024-97) and House Bill 161 (Act 2026-59) as published on the Alabama Legislature's own server, and against the codified text of Sections 8-19G-2, 8-19G-3, 8-19G-9, 8-19G-10, 8-19K-2 and 8-19K-11 of the Code of Alabama 1975, cross-checked against NetChoice's litigation tracker and Alabama news reporting on the law's rollout. Current as of 2026-09-02.

Related Resources

• Age Verification Laws by State
• Texas Age Verification Law
• Mississippi Age Verification Law
• App Store Age Verification Laws

---

Last updated: 2026-09-02.