Wisconsin
Does Wisconsin Have an Age Verification Law? (2026)
Independently fact-checked against primary sources (last audited August 14, 2026). · 2 primary sources cited on this page. How we verify our legal content
Wisconsin has no enacted law requiring age verification to access adult content online, but it came closer than any other state without one. Assembly Bill 105 passed both chambers of the Legislature, was vetoed by Governor Evers, and survived a subsequent veto-override attempt.
AB 105: Passed the Legislature, Stopped by a Veto
A reader who only encounters headlines about the Assembly's 69-22 vote in March 2025 could reasonably assume Wisconsin now has an adult-content age-verification law. It does not. Assembly Bill 105, introduced March 10, 2025 with companion Senate Bill 130, would have prohibited a business from knowingly publishing or distributing material harmful to minors on a website with a 'substantial portion' of such material without using reasonable age verification. An earlier version of the bill included a provision restricting VPN use for age-verification purposes; that provision was stripped before passage in response to pushback.
Two specifics matter for anyone comparing Wisconsin to a state that did enact such a law. First, AB 105 would have created a new section of the statutes, Wis. Stat. sec. 100.76, and it defined the otherwise vague 'substantial portion' trigger precisely: more than one-third of the total material on the website. Second, enforcement would not have run through a state agency. The bill created a private cause of action, letting a person sue for actual and punitive damages, court costs and reasonable attorney fees, without first exhausting any administrative remedy, and it provided that sovereign immunity could not be raised as an affirmative defense. That is the same private-enforcement design that has driven the litigation in states that passed comparable statutes.
The bill's full path through the Legislature is well documented on Wisconsin's own bill-history page. The Assembly State Affairs Committee recommended passage 8-2 on March 13, 2025, and the full Assembly passed the bill on March 20, 2025, Ayes 69, Noes 22, Paired 2, per Wisconsin's own official terminology. It was then referred to the Senate's Mental Health, Substance Abuse Prevention, and Children and Families Committee, which held a hearing on October 8, 2025 and recommended concurrence 3-2 on November 12, 2025. The Senate adopted Senate Amendment 2 and concurred in the amended bill on February 18, 2026. The Assembly then concurred in Senate Amendment 2 on February 19, 2026, which is the step that actually finished the bill and sent it on to enrollment and the governor's desk.
Vetoed, and the Override Failed
AB 105 was presented to Governor Evers on April 2, 2026 and vetoed the following day, April 3, 2026. Under Wisconsin's process, a vetoed bill can still become law if two-thirds of each chamber votes to override the veto. The Assembly attempted that override on May 13, 2026, and the attempt failed, meaning the veto was sustained and AB 105 did not become law. As of this research, no Senate override vote has occurred, and none can succeed without the Assembly override having first succeeded. Section 100.76 does not exist in the Wisconsin statutes.
The App Store and Social Media Bills Also Failed
Wisconsin's Legislature did not stop at adult content. On January 29, 2026, Representative Goeben and a group of coauthors introduced two companion measures aimed at minors' accounts. Assembly Bill 962, which would have created Wis. Stat. sec. 100.85, required app store providers to determine a user's age category and obtain verifiable parental consent before a minor could download or purchase an app, with matching duties on app developers. Assembly Bill 963, which would have created Wis. Stat. sec. 100.72, addressed social media accounts held by minors. Senate Bills 937 and 936 were their respective companions.
Both cleared the Assembly on February 19, 2026, AB 962 by 58-37 and AB 963 by 60-35. Both were then referred to the Senate's Utilities, Technology and Tourism Committee, which held public hearings on both on March 4, 2026. Neither advanced further: on March 23, 2026, the Senate record for each bill reads "failed to concur in." Neither became law, and neither statute section exists. The pattern is consistent across all three bills: the Wisconsin Assembly has repeatedly passed internet age-restriction measures, and none of them has finished the trip.
The Federal Backdrop
No federal law requires adult-content age verification either. The Supreme Court's 2025 decision in Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton upheld Texas's age-verification statute under intermediate scrutiny, but the ruling only settles that a state may enact this kind of law without automatically violating the First Amendment. It does not itself require Wisconsin, or any other state, to pass one.
Congress has not filled the gap either, though it has moved further than it had a year ago. On June 29, 2026, the House passed H.R. 7757, the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act, known as the KIDS Act, by a vote of 267-117 under a suspension of the rules. That package folds in a version of the Kids Online Safety Act and would require online platforms on which more than one-third of the content is sexual material harmful to minors, the same one-third threshold Wisconsin's AB 105 used, to adopt technology that identifies minors and prevents them from accessing it. The Senate received the bill on July 13, 2026 and referred it to the Commerce Committee, where it remains. Separately, COPPA 2.0 passed the Senate by unanimous consent on March 5, 2026 and has been held at the desk in the House since March 16, 2026. None of these measures is law, so nothing federal currently requires a Wisconsin visitor to verify their age.
What This Means for Wisconsin Residents
Because AB 105's veto was sustained, Wisconsin currently has no state trigger requiring adult sites to verify a visitor's age, and adult content sites generally do not restrict access from Wisconsin visitors. A visitor accessing adult content from a Wisconsin IP address is not, under current Wisconsin law, required to submit identification or complete any state-mandated age-verification step. That is the opposite of most states' story in this category: Wisconsin's Legislature acted, and a governor's veto is what stopped it, not legislative inaction.
Researched directly against the Wisconsin Legislature's own official bill-history pages for AB 105, AB 962 and AB 963, and against the congressional record for H.R. 7757, current as of 2026-09-02. Whether a revised age-verification, app store or social media bill is reintroduced in a future Wisconsin session remains open.
Related Resources
- Age Verification Laws by State
- Texas Age Verification Law
- KOSA and COPPA 2.0: Federal Age-Verification Bills Explained
Last updated: 2026-09-02.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Wisconsin require age verification to view adult content?
No. Assembly Bill 105 passed both chambers of the Wisconsin Legislature, but Governor Evers vetoed it and a veto-override attempt failed, so it never became law.
Did Wisconsin's age-verification bill pass the Legislature?
Yes. The Assembly passed AB 105 69-22 in March 2025, the Senate concurred in an amended version on February 18, 2026, and the Assembly concurred in that Senate amendment on February 19, 2026. Governor Evers vetoed the bill on April 3, 2026.
What would AB 105 have required?
It would have created Wis. Stat. sec. 100.76, requiring reasonable age verification on any website where more than one-third of the total material is harmful to minors. Enforcement would have come through private lawsuits for actual and punitive damages, court costs and reasonable attorney fees, and sovereign immunity could not have been raised as a defense.
Was the governor's veto of AB 105 overridden?
No. The Assembly attempted a veto override on May 13, 2026, and the attempt failed, so the veto stands and AB 105 is not law.
Does Wisconsin regulate app store or social media age verification?
No. Assembly Bill 962 would have required app store age checks and parental consent, and Assembly Bill 963 addressed social media accounts for minors. Both passed the Assembly on February 19, 2026, but the Senate did not concur in either bill on March 23, 2026, so neither became law.
Is adult content blocked for Wisconsin residents?
No. Because AB 105 never became law, adult sites generally do not restrict access from Wisconsin visitors.
Could Wisconsin's age-verification bill come back?
Possibly. The veto of AB 105 was sustained, so that bill is finished, but a revised measure could be introduced in a future session. Wisconsin's Assembly has now passed three internet age-restriction bills that failed to become law.
Updates
Closed a previously open question by confirming that Wisconsin’s app store (AB 962) and social media (AB 963) age bills passed the Assembly on February 19, 2026 but died when the Senate failed to concur on March 23, 2026, added AB 105’s specifics (it would have created Wis. Stat. sec. 100.76, defined "substantial portion" as more than one-third of a site’s material, and was enforced by private lawsuit) along with the February 19, 2026 Assembly concurrence, and updated the federal backdrop for the House’s 267-117 passage of the KIDS Act (H.R. 7757) and the Senate’s passage of COPPA 2.0.
Independently fact-checked against the cited primary sources
Sources and References
- Wisconsin Assembly Bill 105 (2025-2026 Session), Official Bill History(docs.legis.wisconsin.gov).gov
- Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton, 606 U.S. 461 (2025), Opinion of the Court(supremecourt.gov).gov
- Wisconsin Assembly Bill 962 (2025-2026 Session), Official Bill History (app stores and app developers)(docs.legis.wisconsin.gov)
- Wisconsin Assembly Bill 963 (2025-2026 Session), Official Bill History (social media accounts for minors)(docs.legis.wisconsin.gov)
- H.R. 7757, Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act (KIDS Act), 119th Congress, Actions and Summary(congress.gov)
- S. 836, Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0), 119th Congress, Actions(congress.gov)