Arkansas Age Verification Law: Act 612 Requirements Explained

Arkansas's age-verification law for adult content, Act 612 of 2023, took effect in mid-2023 (sources vary between July 31 and August 1, 2023; this research did not independently confirm the exact date against the enrolled Act's own text). It requires a reasonable age-verification method before a covered website can be accessed, and it is legally distinct from Arkansas's Social Media Safety Act, which a federal court has since struck down.

What Arkansas's Age-Verification Law Requires

Act 612 of 2023, also known as Senate Bill 66 and codified at Arkansas Code Annotated section 4-88-1101, part of the Protection of Minors from Distribution of Harmful Material Act, requires a covered commercial website to use a reasonable age-verification method before granting access where 33.3 percent or more of its material is harmful to minors. The law took effect in mid-2023 (reported as July 31 or August 1, 2023 depending on the source; this research did not independently confirm Act 612's effective-date clause against its enrolled text), making Arkansas one of the earlier states to enact this model, well before the Supreme Court's 2025 decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton upheld a similar Texas law.

Two Separate Arkansas Laws, Easy to Confuse

Arkansas has two different laws that touch age and online content, and conflating them is the most common reporting error for this state. Act 612 is the adult-content age-verification law described on this page; it has not been challenged in court. Arkansas's Social Media Safety Act, Act 689 (Senate Bill 396) and a related Act 901, is a different statute that requires age verification and parental consent to create a social media account generally, not just to view adult material. A federal judge struck that law down on First Amendment grounds in NetChoice v. Griffin.

That ruling addresses the social-media law's broader restrictions on speech; it has no bearing on Act 612's narrower, adult-content-specific requirement, which remains in force. A reader who sees Arkansas described as having its age-verification law struck down is very likely seeing a report about the social-media law, not this one.

What Act 612 Does and Does Not Do

Act 612 requires a covered site to verify a visitor's age before granting access to material harmful to minors. It does not make that material illegal to possess or view once a visitor is verified as an adult, and it does not require a site to stop serving Arkansas visitors altogether. A platform faced with the compliance requirement generally has two choices: build or license an age-verification system, or decline to serve visitors it cannot easily verify. Which approach any specific site has taken with respect to Arkansas was not independently confirmed in this research, but neither choice is compelled by the statute itself, and describing Act 612 as a ban on the underlying content would misstate what it actually requires.

Enforcement

Act 612 is enforced through the Arkansas Attorney General's office rather than a private right of action. This research did not locate a reported enforcement action or a private lawsuit specific to Act 612, and the exact penalty structure, including any fine ceiling, was not independently confirmed against primary statutory text this session.

Where Arkansas's Law Fits Nationally

Act 612 predates the Supreme Court's June 27, 2025 decision in Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton, 606 U.S. 461 (2025), by nearly two years, but it follows the same basic model that decision later upheld: a commercial entity that publishes material harmful to minors online must use reasonable age verification, and that requirement survives intermediate scrutiny rather than a stricter standard. Arkansas enforced Act 612 for almost two years before the constitutional question was nationally settled, without a reported challenge, which is worth noting given how aggressively Arkansas's separate social-media law was litigated over roughly the same period.

Verified against a direct check of a compliance tracker for Act 612 and NetChoice's own litigation tracker, current as of 2026-08-13. Act 612's exact penalty amounts were not independently confirmed against primary statutory text and are not stated as specific figures on this page. Act 612's precise effective date is also unconfirmed: this page's compliance-tracker source states August 1, 2023, while a separate hub-level source gives July 31, 2023; the enrolled Act's own effective-date clause was not independently reopened this session to resolve the discrepancy, so this page states the effective date as «mid-2023» rather than printing either specific date as settled.

Related Resources

• Age Verification Laws by State
• Texas Age Verification Law
• Georgia Age Verification Law
• Mississippi Age Verification Law

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Last updated: 2026-08-13.