A Federal Judge Just Blocked Utah's Attempt to Outlaw Your VPN Workaround

Utah's SB 73 tried something no state had tried before: it told adult websites they were liable for any user "actually located" in Utah, even if that user was on a VPN or proxy showing them somewhere else. It even barred sites from explaining how to use a VPN to get around the state's age-verification gate.

Judge David Barlow of the U.S. District Court for Utah just put that provision on ice. The law demands perfect geolocation, he wrote, and "it is undisputed that geolocation perfection is not presently possible." Because it can only be met by policing users far outside Utah, its burden on interstate commerce is "heavy," and the challengers are "substantially likely to succeed" in showing it is facially unconstitutional. He granted a preliminary injunction against the VPN provision.

This matters well beyond one industry. VPNs are how dissidents get around China's and Iran's firewalls, and they are how ordinary people protect their privacy and traffic. Once a state can make a website liable for where your encrypted connection "really" is, every privacy tool is on the table. For now, in Utah, it isn't.

As EFF put it: the internet will always route around censorship.

Sources: https://reason.com/2026/10/07/federal-court-slaps-down-utahs-vpn-restrictions/ https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/10/court-agrees-eff-utahs-vpn-law-demands-technical-impossibility