Internet

Federal Court Slaps Down Utah's VPN Restrictions

A judge blocked a rule that would have required adult sites to block VPNs or age-check the world.

J.D. Tuccille | 10.7.2026 7:00 AM

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(Illustration: BiancoBlue/Dreamstime/Midjourney)

As I write, I have my virtual private network (VPN) set to show me as surfing the internet from Berlin, Germany, despite my location in Arizona, for no good reason other than that I can. Given that Germany has rather tight restrictions on speech, this is probably the reverse of how a VPN is usually used between the two countries, but it illustrates the utility of technology that anonymizes internet traffic and lets users pick their points of origin to bypass censorship and surveillance. Germans can bypass controls on "hate speech" and insults directed at politicians, the Chinese can work around restrictions on Winnie the Pooh memes, and people in places like Utah can ignore intrusive age-verification rules.

That's why it's important that a federal court just paused enforcement of Utah's effort to regulate VPNs.

You are reading The Rattler from J.D. Tuccille and Reason. Get more of J.D.'s commentary on government overreach and threats to everyday liberty.

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Utah Pushes Age Verification and Targets VPNs

"Signed into law earlier this year, SB 73 attempted to regulate adult websites by requiring them to block VPN users or to identify the physical location of visitors using them or similar tools that mask their network traffic," the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Rindala Alajaji details in a response to the case. "It even went so far as to prohibit websites from offering instructions on how to use a VPN to bypass these checks. This made Utah, to EFF's........

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