Montana Age Verification Law: SB 544 and the 2025 Amendment Explained

Montana's age-verification law began in 2023 as an Attorney General-enforceable statute, but a 2025 amendment narrowed it to private civil suits only. That narrowing is also why the one federal case testing the law was dismissed, not because a court ruled the law unconstitutional.

What Montana's Age-Verification Law Requires

Montana Code Annotated §30-14-159 requires a commercial entity that publishes material harmful to minors on an internet website to use reasonable age-verification methods to confirm a visitor is 18 or older. The section was originally enacted by Senate Bill 544 in the 2023 legislative session, then amended in 2025 by Chapter 199, Laws of 2025.

That 2025 amendment did not touch the underlying age-verification duty. What it changed was who can enforce it: the statute's text now reads, in relevant part, "This section may only be enforced by individuals claiming damages pursuant to subsection (3)." Before the amendment, Montana's Attorney General had a role in enforcing the law; after it, only a private individual bringing a damages claim can.

Why the Federal Challenge Was Dismissed, and Why That Is Not the Same as Being Upheld

Free Speech Coalition, Inc. and other plaintiffs sued Montana's Attorney General over the law in Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Knudsen, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana. In October 2024 the presiding judge denied the state's motion to dismiss as to the First Amendment claims, granting it only on a separate dormant Commerce Clause count, and applied strict scrutiny to the law at that stage of the case. That ruling came eight months before the U.S. Supreme Court's June 2025 decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, which held that intermediate scrutiny, not strict scrutiny, governs this category of age-verification law. The October 2024 strict-scrutiny analysis is accordingly no longer the controlling standard on that question, even though the order itself was never vacated.

The case was ultimately dismissed in August 2025, but on standing grounds, not because a court reached and rejected the plaintiffs' First Amendment claims. Once the 2025 amendment removed the Attorney General's enforcement authority, the plaintiffs no longer had a state enforcer to sue, and the court found they lacked standing to continue the case. That is a procedural dismissal, not a ruling that Montana's law survives constitutional scrutiny on the merits.

Enforcement Today: Private Damages Suits Only

Montana's Attorney General currently has no authority to bring an enforcement action under §30-14-159. The only path to enforcing the law is a private individual bringing a civil claim for damages under subsection (3) of the statute. This is the same structural position Kentucky's law occupies, except Kentucky's statute was written that way from the start; Montana's law reached this point through the 2025 amendment.

The Law Requires Verification, Not a Ban

Montana's statute requires covered sites to verify a visitor's age before granting access to material harmful to minors. It does not make that material illegal for a verified adult to view. Whether a given site builds a verification system or chooses to block Montana traffic instead is a business decision made by that company, not something Montana's law requires.

Related Resources

• Age Verification Laws by State
• Kentucky Age Verification Law
• Texas Age Verification Law
• Utah Age Verification Law

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Last updated: 2026-08-13.