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WASHINGTON — A Republican congressman has introduced legislation to bar U.S. courts from helping to enforce any foreign law restricting speech that would domestically be protected under the First Amendment, potentially including foreign age verification laws.

On Thursday, Rep. Michael Rulli of Ohio introduced the Guaranteeing Rights Against Novel International Tyranny and Extortion (GRANITE) Act, which would prohibit domestic courts from recognizing or enforcing “a foreign judgment, or a fine, order, or demand issued by a foreign court or a foreign state, enforcing a foreign censorship law.”

The bill defines “foreign censorship law” as any law of a foreign state that “has the primary purpose or substantial effect of restricting or penalizing expression, expressive conduct, or expressive association; targets expression, expressive conduct, or expressive association based on its content, viewpoint, or speaker identity; or compels disclosure that would reasonably chill that expression, expressive conduct, or expressive association; and would conflict with the protections of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution if recognized in the United States.”

This language raises the question of whether or not age verification laws, such as the AV provisions in the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) and the U.K.’s Online Safety Act (OSA), would be classified as foreign censorship laws. If so, the GRANITE Act could potentially protect U.S.-based adult sites from domestic enforcement of those laws, such as pursuing fines against U.S.-based sites. Foreign governments and agencies could still take domestic measures such as blocking U.S. sites within their own territory, however.

Free-speech advocates argue that AV laws target expression based on content and also chill expression, factors that point to classification as censorship under the GRANITE Act. Additionally, the GRANITE Act was conceived by attorney Preston Byrne, who has represented the online forum 4chan in opposing U.K. media regulator Ofcom’s attempts to force that platform to implement AV measures to prevent minors from accessing pornography.

In the pivotal case Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, however, the Supreme Court declared that “the First Amendment leaves undisturbed States’ traditional power to prevent minors from accessing speech that is obscene from their perspective. That power includes the power to require proof of age before an individual can access such speech. It follows that no person — adult or child — has a First Amendment right to access such speech without first submitting proof of age.” The court upheld the constitutionality of state AV laws so long as they only “incidentally” burden the protected speech of adults. This suggests that AV laws conforming to that rule would not fit the bill’s definition of “foreign censorship.”

Industry attorney Lawrence Walters told XBIZ that, should the GRANITE Act become law, U.S. companies subject to foreign judgments based on purported violations of AV laws could argue that such laws fit the bill’s definition of foreign censorship.

“It would be up to a reviewing court whether the Supreme Court’s decision in Paxton precludes these arguments,” Walters explained. “Each foreign law would need to be independently evaluated against the holding of Paxton. Some foreign laws go far beyond sexual expression when defining ‘harmful content.’ Therefore, the Paxton reasoning may not apply to some of these laws, thereby potentially shielding U.S. operators from foreign judgments.”

Industry attorney Corey D. Silverstein agreed that the GRANITE Act could provide U.S.-based companies with a meaningful defense against domestic enforcement of certain foreign online age verification laws, if those laws satisfy the bill’s criteria for constituting censorship, “particularly when their application depends on the content being accessed or when they require users to disclose identifying information as a condition of accessing protected speech.”

“The analysis would ultimately depend on the precise coverage, verification methods, privacy protections and enforcement mechanisms of the particular foreign law,” Silverstein told XBIZ. “The more difficult requirement is that recognition of the foreign law must conflict with the First Amendment.

“In Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, the Supreme Court held that Texas’ requirement for age verification on websites substantially devoted to sexual material harmful to minors imposed only an incidental burden on adults’ protected speech,” Silverstein elaborated. “Accordingly, if a foreign AV law is directed specifically at minors’ access to material that is obscene as to minors, allows adults access after reasonable age verification, and is adequately tailored, then Paxton would support an argument that recognizing the law would not conflict with the First Amendment. In that circumstance, the law might fall outside GRANITE’s definition.”

Rulli is not the only elected official advocating for such a federal law. Republican Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri stated last year that he intended to introduce similar legislation. At the state level, Wyoming earlier this year weighed its own version of the GRANITE Act, which passed the state House but failed to advance in the state Senate.

Trump administration officials have also repeatedly characterized European content laws as an attack on free speech, going so far as to impose visa restrictions on EU figures the administration perceives as leading “efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.” This may indicate potential administration support for the GRANITE Act, should it advance in the legislative process.

The bill has been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.

Romantix-Fargo Zoning Dispute Heads Back to District Court

August 27, 2026

ST. PAUL, Minn. — A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled that zoning officials in Fargo, North Dakota, acted in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner when they prevented sex toy retailer Romantix from opening a planned retail store in that city.

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit in Romantix-Fargo, Inc. v. City of Fargo, et al. concerns Romantix’s 2022 attempt to open a proposed new location in Fargo’s downtown mixed-use district (DMU).

In its suit and appeal, Romantix-Fargo contended that the city of Fargo subjected the company to a sort of bait-and-switch. Zoning officials, the company said, initially indicated via a zoning confirmation letter that they would approve its plan to open a new store in the city’s DMU district — as long as it did not sell sexually oriented books or magazines, since stocking those items would classify it as an “adult bookstore.”

According to a Courthouse News report earlier this year, Romantix then retooled its plans to follow the city’s guidance, signed a seven-year lease and spent $400,000 on the planned new store — only to have its permit denied based on a new interpretation of the rules which equated its operation, for zoning purposes, with an adult bookstore.

Romantix sued the city, which shortly thereafter began updating its zoning ordinances to classify “sexual device shops” as “adult establishments.” Under the amended provisions, a store like Romantix would therefore no longer be permitted in the DMU zone.

Romantix sought a preliminary injunction against the city’s decision denying it a permit, arguing that if the company were unable to open and operate before the new ordinance was passed, its business would be “destroyed without full legal remedy.” The court denied the preliminary injunction, and the zoning amendment later passed.

In its suit against Fargo and the city’s director of planning and development, Romantix contended that the decision to deny its requested change-of-use permit was “arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable conduct,” as the city never provided any clear or reasonable interpretation of “adult bookstore” applicable to the products the store planned to offer. This vagueness, the store contended, made it impossible for it to know what was prohibited.

After arguing unsuccessfully before a lower court, the store appealed its case to the 8th Circuit. In its appeal brief, Romantix-Fargo stated, “Changing position as to the meaning of Adult Bookstore after official direction was supplied is the very epitome of unfair.”

The company told the 8th Circuit that the city’s zoning director lacks the authority to disregard the text of the land development code (LDC) “simply because doing so would not produce the desired result,” and that administering officials had conducted an “ad hoc analysis according to their own personal predilections.”

“Definitions do not change based on the Zoning Director’s personal preferences,” the brief stated. “The City was asked and it confirmed the meaning of the definition of Adult Bookstore. Romantix-Fargo relied upon and followed that guidance. The City reversed course without a valid explanation, let alone one rooted in the text of the LDC.”

At a March 17 appeal hearing before the 8th Circuit, Romantix-Fargo’s attorney, Matthew Hoffer, told a panel of three federal judges that the city of Fargo blocked its downtown location based on a desire to exclude the company, only retroactively adjusting its zoning ordinances to justify the denial.

“The city realized the problems with its ordinance in that it couldn’t, under the language of the definition of ‘adult bookstore,’ regulate sexual device shops or sexual wellness shops, because quite frankly the definition doesn’t encompass those items,” Hoffer stated.

Hoffer argued that the revised ordinance should not matter for the case, since “at the time that Romantix Fargo Inc. applied for their permit, the definition was just ‘adult bookstore,’ not ‘sex device shop.’” He asked the court to require that the city apply only the law that was in effect at the time of the store’s initial application.

Representing the city of Fargo, attorney Scott Bergthold told the court that Romantix was not entitled to such “grandfathering,” in part because it never actually opened or operated the proposed store, but merely “contemplated” doing so.

On Thursday, the 8th Circuit rejected some of Romantix’s claims, including that the city violated its First Amendment rights — on the grounds that the proposed store did not plan to sell any books, magazines, periodicals or DVDs — and that the zoning ordinance was unconstitutionally vague. However, the court called the issue of whether the city should have applied the ordinance to Romantix in the first place “a separate question.”

Since Romantix’s proposed store did not meet the then-operative definition of “adult bookstore,” Thursday’s ruling states, the zoning commissioners’ denial of the permit application was indeed “arbitrary and capricious under state law.”

The court noted that it remains unclear what relief is still available to Romantix, but remanded the case back to the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota – Eastern, to address whether Romantix’s state-law claim is moot, or whether it is possible for Romantix retroactively to obtain a permit under the former ordinance.

If the district court decides that Romantix’s claim is not moot, the store proposal could be revived and brought back before Fargo’s zoning commission.