Revenge Porn Laws by State: All 50 States and DC (2026)

Yes. Sharing another adult's intimate images without their consent is a crime in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and since May 19, 2025 it is also a federal crime under the Take It Down Act. South Carolina was the last state to criminalize it, in May 2025.

What still differs from state to state is how serious the charge is, whether the statute reaches AI-generated images, and whether you can sue on your own. The table below sets out all 51 jurisdictions, with each cite linked to the official state source.

Is nonconsensual intimate imagery illegal everywhere?

Every US jurisdiction now has a criminal statute covering the nonconsensual disclosure of intimate images. The statutes carry different names. Some are called revenge porn laws, others unlawful dissemination of an intimate image, disclosure of private images, sexual cyberharassment, or unlawful exposure. A few states never wrote a standalone law and instead folded the conduct into an existing offense: Alaska handles it inside its harassment statute at AS 11.61.120(a)(6), Iowa inside Iowa Code § 708.7, Massachusetts inside the criminal harassment statute at c. 265, § 43A, and Montana inside its privacy in communications statute at § 45-8-213.

Federal law now sits on top of all of it. Public Law 119-12 added a new subsection to 47 U.S.C. § 223 that makes it a federal crime to knowingly publish nonconsensual intimate imagery of an identifiable adult, punishable by up to 2 years, or of a minor, punishable by up to 3 years. The same two-track structure applies to digital forgeries, and threats to publish carry the same 2-year and 3-year maximums where the image is authentic, and 18 months for an adult or 30 months for a minor where the threatened image is a digital forgery.

That matters most for the states whose own statutes have gaps. A person in Mississippi or New Mexico, whose criminal statutes do not reach AI-generated images, is not without a criminal remedy, because the federal digital-forgery provision applies there too.

Revenge porn laws by state, as of August 2026

Each state name in the deepfakes column links to that state's deepfake page for the AI-specific detail. Classification is compressed to the tiers that appear in the statute text itself. State legislatures amend these provisions constantly, so treat the table as current to August 2026 and open the linked statute before relying on a cell.

* No dedicated state civil cause of action was located in the statute text we opened for this table. That is not proof none exists, and it does not affect the federal civil claim under 15 U.S.C. § 6851, which is available in every state.

Felony or misdemeanor: where the states actually differ

Thirteen states charge a first offense as a felony outright. Arizona (Class 5, rising to Class 4 for electronic disclosure), Hawaii (Class C), Idaho, Illinois (Class 4), Kansas (severity level 8 person felony), Louisiana (punishable by up to two years with or without hard labor), Missouri (Class D), Nevada (Category D), New Hampshire (Class B), New Jersey (third degree), North Carolina (Class H), Ohio (fifth degree), and Texas (state jail felony) all start there.

The larger group starts at a misdemeanor and escalates. The triggers repeat across the country: a prior conviction (Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, West Virginia), a profit or financial gain motive (Delaware, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Vermont), and a minor victim (California, Missouri, Pennsylvania, South Dakota).

Connecticut escalates on a different axis. Sending an image to one person is a Class A misdemeanor there, but sending it to more than one person through an online or telecommunications service is a Class D felony, which keys the penalty to how far the image travelled rather than to the offender's record.

A handful of states set penalties higher for synthetic images than for real ones. South Dakota grades real-image offenses as a Class 1 misdemeanor but digitally fabricated material as a Class 5 felony. Wyoming punishes the real-image offense as a misdemeanor and the separate synthetic sexual material offense by up to 10 years. Ohio grades fabricated sexual images one degree above real ones.

The deepfake gap

Thirty-three of the 51 jurisdictions have criminal statutes that reach AI-generated or digitally altered intimate images, and they get there by different drafting routes. Some fold synthetic content into the definition of the covered image, as Alabama does by covering a recording that a reasonable person would believe depicts an identifiable individual regardless of whether it is artificially generated. Some define a term of art: digitization in New York and Vermont, deep fake in Delaware and Michigan, digitally fabricated in Montana and South Dakota, synthetic image in New Hampshire, synthetic intimate representation in Wisconsin, artificially generated sexual depiction in Pennsylvania and Oklahoma. Four states put the deepfake offense in an entirely separate statute: Arkansas at § 5-14-139, Michigan under the 2025 Protection from Intimate Deep Fakes Act, Texas at Penal Code § 21.165, and Wyoming at § 6-4-307.

Sixteen jurisdictions have criminal statutes that, in the text we opened, still describe only an image photographed or recorded of the real person: Alaska, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, Tennessee, and Washington.

Some of those gaps are the result of failed bills rather than oversight. New Mexico legislators introduced a sensitive deepfake image bill twice, as HB 530 in 2025 and HB 22 in 2026, and both died in committee. Mississippi SB 2437, the Prohibition of Exploitation by Deepfakes Act, died in committee on February 4, 2025. In New Jersey, A4430 would raise the disclosure offense from a third degree to a second degree crime but had not passed as of August 2026.

Two jurisdictions land in between. Arizona covers a realistic pictorial representation only in the threat tier, which is a Class 1 misdemeanor, not in the felony disclosure offense. North Dakota's definition of an intimate image includes a computer or computer-generated image but has no AI or synthetic-media language beyond that. Illinois shows a third pattern: the criminal statute at 720 ILCS 5/11-23.5 has no deepfake language at all, but the civil act at 740 ILCS 190 § 10 expressly reaches an image that has been intentionally digitally altered.

If your state is in the gap list, the federal digital forgery provision still applies to your situation, and so may a separate state deepfake statute that sits outside the revenge porn law.

Civil remedies: suing the person who shared the images

Twenty-five of the 51 jurisdictions have a state civil cause of action we were able to locate, and they are structured three ways.

Some write the civil claim into the criminal statute itself. Florida § 784.049(7) allows injunctive relief, the greater of $10,000 or actual damages, punitive damages, and fees. Missouri § 573.110 sets damages at $10,000 or actual damages and states that humiliation and embarrassment alone are enough to show damages. North Carolina § 14-190.5A(g) sets liquidated damages at the higher of $1,000 per day of violation or $10,000.

Others adopted a uniform act. Colorado, Delaware, Washington, and West Virginia all enacted versions of the Uniform Civil Remedies for Unauthorized Disclosure of Intimate Images Act, and South Carolina joined them in 2026 with Act No. 131. Those statutes turn on whether the defendant knew or acted with reckless disregard as to consent, privacy, and identifiability, and they generally provide that consenting to the creation of an image is not consent to its disclosure.

A third group has a general-purpose statute elsewhere in the code. New York Civil Rights Law § 52-b covers images created or altered by digitization and runs for the later of three years after publication or one year after discovery. Virginia § 8.01-40.4 allows suit whether or not the person was ever charged. Wisconsin § 995.50 treats conduct prohibited by § 942.09 as an invasion of privacy regardless of whether there was a criminal case.

Two are narrower than they look. Kentucky KRS 411.215 does not create liability for sharing the image at all; it creates liability of $1,000 per image per day against a site that fails to remove an image within a reasonable time after the depicted person asks. Vermont § 2606 provides injunctive relief inside the criminal section rather than a damages claim.

Wherever you live, 15 U.S.C. § 6851 is available. Enacted as part of the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization in 2022, it lets a person whose intimate visual depiction was disclosed in interstate commerce recover actual damages or liquidated damages of $150,000, plus costs and reasonable attorney fees, and it lets a guardian sue on behalf of a minor or an incapacitated or deceased person.

How federal and state law stack

The Take It Down Act does not replace state law. The statute text contains no preemption clause, so state criminal statutes continue to operate in full alongside the federal offense, and prosecutors at either level can act on the same conduct.

The Act also does not give you a right to sue a platform. It creates a criminal offense enforced by the Department of Justice and a notice-and-removal duty enforced by the FTC as an unfair or deceptive practice, with civil penalties of $53,088 per violation running to the government rather than to you. Your civil routes are 15 U.S.C. § 6851 and whatever your state provides.

The first conviction under the Act came on April 7, 2026, when a Columbus man pleaded guilty in the Southern District of Ohio to three counts: publication of digital forgeries, which is the Take It Down Act count, plus cyberstalking and producing obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children. On the platform side, the FTC began enforcement on May 19, 2026 and sent letters to fifteen major services. As of August 2026 we have found no completed FTC enforcement action against a platform under the Act.

Notable states

Virginia legislated first on deepfakes. Its 2019 amendment to § 18.2-386.2 extended the offense to a person whose image was used in creating, adapting, or modifying an image with the intent to depict an actual person, making it the first state law to reach synthetic intimate imagery. The offense itself remains a Class 1 misdemeanor.

South Carolina was last to criminalize the conduct and then moved quickly. Its May 2025 law at § 16-15-332 covers digitally forged intimate images and carries a felony tier for acting with intent to harm or profit, and the legislature added a civil remedy in 2026 through Act No. 131, the Uniform Civil Remedies for Unauthorized Disclosure of Intimate Images Act, ratified on May 14, 2026.

Texas graded § 21.16 a Class A misdemeanor when it was enacted in 2015 and raised it to a state jail felony in 2017. What changed in 2025 was the deepfake side: S.B. 441 rewrote § 21.165's definition of deep fake media, added a threats offense and nudification-app provisions, and extended civil liability under Chapter 98B to artificial intimate visual material.

Michigan took the separate-act route in 2025 with the Protection from Intimate Deep Fakes Act, which creates both a criminal offense, rising to a felony where the person acted for profit or with intent to harass, extort, threaten, or harm, and a civil action with damages, disgorgement of profit, attorney fees, and injunctive relief. Michigan's base revenge porn statute at MCL 750.145e remains a misdemeanor at both tiers.

If images of you have been posted

Document what is online before anything else, including URLs, screenshots, and timestamps, because content moves and disappears. Then use the platform's reporting process, which since May 19, 2026 carries the 48-hour federal removal duty for covered platforms. Our step-by-step guide on how to file a Take It Down request covers the order to do things in, the free hash-matching tools, and when to escalate to the FTC or the FBI.

How this table was verified

Every cell above rests on a source a researcher opened in August 2026, and where a source could not be opened, the cell says what was actually confirmed rather than what a summary claimed.

Several states do not publish free official code text. Georgia, Arkansas, and Mississippi route to commercial portals that blocked automated access, so those rows were verified against the official enacting legislation instead: Georgia House Bill 838 of 2014 plus the 2020 deepfake amendment in Senate Bill 337, Arkansas Act 304 of 2015, and Mississippi Senate Bill 2121 of 2021. New Jersey and New Mexico were verified the same way, from official bill text on the legislatures' own systems, because neither state hosts a browsable current code. Tennessee was read from the Secretary of State session-law PDFs; a 2025 amendment reported by news coverage was not opened, so the Tennessee row reflects the law through the 2022 amendment.

A few cells carry residual uncertainty that is worth naming. Minnesota reportedly has a separate civil statute at § 604.31 that we could not confirm this pass, so its civil cell reads No. Idaho reportedly enacted a synthetic-media provision in 2024 outside § 18-6605, which we did not verify, so the deepfake cell is limited to what § 18-6605 itself says. Oregon's civil cite at ORS 30.833 and Illinois's civil act at 740 ILCS 190 were identified but their full text was not independently opened.

A further set of cells was carried forward from earlier research rather than reopened in this pass, and is flagged here rather than presented as freshly checked: the California civil cite at Cal. Civ. Code § 1708.85, the Texas civil cite at Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code ch. 98B, the Arkansas deepfake civil cite at § 16-118-119, and the 2024 Louisiana amendments to La. R.S. 14:283.2. Montana's misdemeanor tier is likewise an inference from the general penalty schedule rather than a figure stated in § 45-8-213 itself.

This article is general legal information about US federal and state law as of August 2026, not legal advice, and statutes change frequently. For advice about your own situation, speak with a lawyer licensed in your state.