Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is suing companies that operate porn websites for noncompliance with the state’s new age verification law, which kicked in at the start of the year.
While some well-known sites pulled down their content to users inside Florida, others have continued to operate without requiring users to verify their age, including XVideos.com which reportedly has millions of visitors from Florida.
Uthmeier on Tuesday filed a civil lawsuit against Webgroup Czech Republic, NKL Associates, Sonesta Technologies Inc., GGW Group, and Traffic F for allegedly breaking state law and endangering minors. Many of the companies are based in the Czech Republic but several maintain Florida offices.
Uthmeier is asking the court to temporarily and permanently enjoin the companies to prevent future violations of the law and is seeking civil penalties, attorney’s fees and costs, and punitive damages.
He wants the judge to issue an order requiring the companies to divest ownership of the domain names XVideos.com, XNXX.com (which are free to access), and GirlsGoneWild.com.
“Multiple porn companies are flagrantly breaking Florida’s age verification law by exposing children to harmful, explicit content. As a father of young children, and as Attorney General, this is completely unacceptable,” Uthmeier said in a prepared statement. “We are taking legal action against these online pornographers who are willfully preying on the innocence of children for their financial gain.”
Deceptive trade practices
Each knowing and intentional violation of Florida’s age-verification law constitutes an unfair and deceptive trade practice. The AG’s office notes that each violation is subject to a $50,000 penalty.
Uthmeier’s office wrote letters to two companies, WebGroup and NKL, on April 10, demanding they come into compliance with the law within 30 days, according to the suit. The letters warned there would be sanctions if they didn’t comply.
But no changes were made, the attorneys said.
“Each day that the pornographers continue to violate Florida’s age-verification law, they rack up tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of violations of these provisions and of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act,” the suit says. “Motivated by greed, the Pornographers willfully prey on the children and adolescents of Florida to the detriment of their health and well-being.”
The Florida Legislature passed HB 3 in 2024, joining scores of other states that required age verification for porn sites. Two lawsuits have been filed against the law. But a U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding a similar Texas law brought the legal challenges against HB 3 to an end.
According to the suit, the website XVideos.com is the 20th most popular website in the world with 1.228 billion monthly visitors, of which they estimate 18 million visits a month come from Florida.
XNXX.com is the 30th most popular website in the world with an estimated 16 million visits from Florida a month.
GirlsGoneWild.com has more than 353,000 monthly visitors, of which approximately 9,200 are from Florida a month.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter.
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This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2025.