Maryland
Does Maryland Have an Age Verification Law? (2026)
Maryland does not have an enacted law requiring adult websites to verify a visitor's age. HB 394, the state's one direct attempt, died in the House Judiciary Committee in 2025 without ever reaching a vote.
What Happened to Maryland's Age-Verification Bill
HB 394 was read for the first time and referred to the House Judiciary Committee on January 16, 2025. The committee held a hearing on February 5, 2025, but no committee vote was recorded, and the bill received no further floor action before the 2025 session ended on April 8, 2025.
As introduced, HB 394 would have required commercial entities to use reasonable age-verification methods to confirm a visitor is 18 or older, barred the entity and any third-party verification service from retaining identifying information collected during that check, and created a private right of action allowing a person to sue for damages. It exempted internet service providers, search engines, and news organizations, and would have taken effect October 1, 2025, had it passed.
An Open Question: Maryland's Privacy Law and Adult Content
Maryland has an enacted Maryland Online Data Privacy Act, which includes provisions sometimes described as an age-appropriate design code for minors and is often referred to informally as Maryland's Kids Code. Whether that law's minors'-data provisions reach adult or pornographic content in any way was not confirmed in this research; repeated attempts to reach authoritative sources describing the law's scope did not succeed. This page does not assert that Maryland's privacy law functions as, or is equivalent to, an adult-content age-verification requirement, and readers researching that law specifically should treat the question as open rather than settled.
The Federal and Multistate Backdrop
No federal law requires age verification for adult content; Congress has considered child-online-safety bills like the Kids Online Safety Act, but none has been signed into law. As of August 2026, more than two dozen states have enacted their own adult-content age-verification statutes, following the Supreme Court's 2025 decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton settling intermediate scrutiny as the applicable First Amendment standard. Maryland is not among them. See the age verification laws hub for the full state comparison and the Texas age verification law page for the controlling Supreme Court case.
What This Means for Maryland Residents
Because Maryland has no adult-content age-verification statute, adult websites have no state-law reason to block Maryland visitors or require an age check before granting access. This research did not find Maryland on any published list of states that Aylo, Pornhub's parent company, currently geo-blocks; that finding rests on secondary aggregator reporting rather than a directly confirmed primary source.
This page reflects Maryland's status as of August 13, 2026, based on the Maryland General Assembly's own bill-history record for HB 394. Whether the Maryland Online Data Privacy Act reaches adult content remains an open question this research did not resolve.
Related Resources
- Age Verification Laws by State
- Virginia Age Verification Law
- KOSA and COPPA 2.0: Federal Age-Verification Bills
Last updated: 2026-08-13.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there an age verification law in Maryland?
No. As of August 2026, Maryland has not enacted a law requiring adult websites to verify a visitor's age. Its one direct attempt, HB 394, died in committee in April 2025.
What happened to HB 394?
HB 394 was referred to the House Judiciary Committee, received a hearing on February 5, 2025, and died without a committee vote or further floor action when the 2025 session ended.
Does Maryland's data privacy law require age verification for adult sites?
This research could not confirm, one way or the other, whether Maryland's Online Data Privacy Act (sometimes called its Kids Code) reaches adult content. It is a general minors'-data law, and this page does not assert that it functions as a pornography age-verification requirement.
Is porn banned in Maryland?
No, and there is no age-verification requirement either. Adult content remains accessible in Maryland the same way it is in any other state without an enacted age-verification statute.
Updates
Independently fact-checked against the cited primary sources
Sources and References
- HB 394 (2025), Maryland General Assembly, Bill History and Status(billtrack50.com)
- Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton, 606 U.S. 461 (2025), Opinion of the Court(supremecourt.gov).gov
- Maryland HB 394 bill status, Maryland General Assembly(mgaleg.maryland.gov).gov