Mississippi SB 2346 Age Verification: FAQs & Staying Compliant

Mississippi SB 2346 requires that any “commercial entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors on the internet from a website that contains a substantial portion of such material shall be held liable if the entity fails to perform reasonable age verification methods to verify the age of individuals attempting to access the material.” It also stipulates that entities “shall not retain any identifying information of the individual [user] after access has been granted to the material.”

The act holds commercial entities in violation “liable to an individual for damages resulting from a minor’s accessing the [pornographic] material, including court costs and reasonable attorney fees as ordered by the court.” Similar penalties apply for retaining identifying information, either by the commercial entity itself or a third-party age verification vendor.

Mississippi SB 2346 covers corporations, limited liability companies, partnerships, limited partnerships, sole proprietorships and other legally recognized entities that operate a website containing at least one-third “material harmful to minors.” It only covers material served to users and consumers in the state of Mississippi (e.g., Jackson, Gulfport, Southaven).

The bill defines “material harmful to minors” as “Any material that the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find, taking the material as a whole and with respect to minors, is designed to appeal to, or is designed to pander to, the prurient interest.” In particular, SB 2346 calls out “material that exploits, is devoted to, or principally consists of descriptions of actual, simulated, or animated display or depiction of any of [NSFW acts starting in Section 2-D-ii-1], in a manner patently offensive with respect to minors.” The “material taken as a whole” must lack “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.”

SB 2346 only covers access to material by Mississippi residents. “Bona fide news or public interest broadcast[s], website video[s], report[s] or event[s]” are exempt, as are online outlets with less than one-third “material harmful to minors.” (It is not specified how this third is counted.) Internet service providers, their affiliates and subsidiaries, search engines and cloud service providers cannot be held liable for “providing access or connection to or from a website or other information or content on the internet or a facility, system or network not under that provider’s control.”

Mississippi SB 2346 requires that users attempting to access materials verify they are at least 18 years old by providing a “digitized identification card,” or by complying “with a commercial age verification system.” The system must verify a government-issued identification document or utilize “any commercially reasonable method that relies on public or private transactional data to verify the age of the person attempting to access the information is at least eighteen (18) years of age or older.”

Veratad’s age verification solutions offer near-plug-and-play SB 2346 compliance. We support both document- and data-based verification methods, and comply with SB 2346’s rules around data retention. You can request a demo of Veratad’s age verification platform here.

The full text of Mississippi SB 2346 is available here (PDF).