The Splinternet Hits America: Why Wisconsin and Michigan Want to Ban Your VPN

“Politicians who can’t tell the difference between a security tool and a ‘loophole’ shouldn’t be writing laws about the internet.” — Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

We have warned about this. First, they came for the porn sites with age verification laws. Then, they came for the social media platforms. Now, seeing that users have simply turned to privacy tools to stay off the radar, state legislators are going after the tools themselves.

If you thought the USA VPN ban talks were just fear-mongering nonsense, welcome to 2026.

Two states, Wisconsin and Michigan, are currently piloting legislation that would fundamentally break the way the internet works in America. While their stated goal is “protecting minors” (yes, yes, we’ve heard that before), the reality is a legislative dragnet that treats privacy software as digital contraband.

I analyzed the text of Wisconsin’s AB 105 and Michigan’s HB 4938. Here is why they are not just dangerous—they are technically illiterate.

From ID Checks to VPN Blocks: The Global Context

It started with a simple premise: “Protect the kids.” In 2025, we watched a domino effect of digital ID mandates across the USA. Suddenly, you needed a driver’s license to scroll social media in Utah and verify your age to read content in Texas.

The market reacted exactly how any network engineer would predict: users didn’t stop browsing; they just went underground, triggering massive surges in VPN downloads.

But wait, is it illegal to use a VPN in the USA? Not yet, but legislators worldwide are realizing that their expensive digital fences have a gaping hole, and rather than rethinking the fence, they are trying to cement that hole. And this isn’t just a quirky local problem. It is a synchronized global crackdown.

• In the UK, the implementation of the Online Safety Act has sparked a fierce debate on whether VPNs themselves should require age checks, effectively destroying the anonymity they are built to provide.
• The EU is aggressively rolling out its Digital ID Wallet, creating a unified digital identity layer that makes true anonymity increasingly difficult to maintain.
• Australia is tightening the noose on anonymous browsing with its own digital ID framework and social media age checks that are already in effect.
• Even Denmark, traditionally a bastion of digital rights, has seen startling legal challenges to VPN use.

The pattern is identical from Lansing to London: First, mandate identification. Second, demonize the tools that bypass it. And as people like us are using VPNs to exercise our right to privacy, Wisconsin and Michigan have joined the list of the battlegrounds in a global war to close that exit door.

🧠 Also read: Digital ID and VPNs: How Privacy Fears Reshape Online Behavior

Block or Pay: Wisconsin VPN Proposal (AB 105/SB 130)

Wisconsin isn’t trying to criminalize you for using a VPN—yet. Instead, they are trying to deputize every website owner as a border patrol agent.

The mechanism

Under Assembly Bill 105 (and its Senate counterpart SB 130), any website that hosts more than 33.3% content “harmful to minors” must not only verify age but also block any user attempting to access the site via a VPN.

💡 Quick tip: What Does a VPN Hide?

The technical absurdity

This sounds simple to a politician. To a network engineer, it is a nightmare. As the EFF points out in their recent opposition statement, “Websites have no way to tell if a VPN connection is coming from Milwaukee, Michigan, or Mumbai.”

To comply, a website would need to:

1. Blocklist data centers: Subscribe to massive lists of IP addresses belonging to VPN providers.
2. Implement deep packet inspection (DPI): Analyze the shape of your traffic—something a standard web server simply cannot do.

🧠 Also read: Free vs. Paid VPNs: What’s the Real Difference in 2026?

The consequence

VPN detection isn’t perfect, and web application firewall (WAF) tests show that aggressive blocking algorithms have a false positive rate as high as 54.2%. If that Wisconsin VPN law passes, innocent users—like a traveling employee working from a hotel in Milwaukee—could be locked out because their IP address “looks” like a VPN.

And we’re not speaking just about adult content. The bill’s definition of “harmful” is broad enough that it could force medical sites, art galleries, and LGBTQ+ resources to implement these blocks or face crushing liability.

🧠 Also read: VPN Blocking: Where, Why, and How VPNs Get Blocked—And What You Can Do About It

Michigan VPN Ban Plan (HB 4938)

If Wisconsin’s bill is a misguided attempt at filtering, Michigan’s HB 4938 is the nuclear option.

Titled the “Anticorruption of Public Morals Act,” this Michigan VPN law goes significantly further. It explicitly aims to ban the sale, installation, or use of “circumvention tools,” defining them as anything that allows a user to “bypass internet filtering mechanisms.” 

But here is the problem: that is also the definition of the security software used by every bank, hospital, and remote-first company in America.

As cybersecurity expert Tim O’Connor noted in his analysis of the bill, “The bill would effectively shut down not only personal VPNs but also VPN technology used for processing credit cards, security updates, industrial systems, and remote work.”

Imagine you live in Detroit and work for a bank. To access customer records securely from your home Wi-Fi, you must use a corporate VPN. Under a strict reading of this Michigan anti-VPN law, your employer is distributing a circumvention tool, and you are using it to bypass local network filtering.

If this bill passes in Michigan, you’ll be viewed as a criminal unless you can prove you aren’t using it for “immoral” purposes. And in a legal system, proving a negative is a dangerous game.

However, I doubt that will happen, at least not in the foreseeable future. And here’s why.

What the U.S. Constitution Says

Some users are right to worry about what’s going to happen if Wisconsin SB 130 or Michigan HB 4938 proposals pass and set a dangerous precedent for other states that might follow suit, leading to a full-blown VPN ban USA-wide.

But as much as state legislators want to dispute the legal status of VPNs, these bills are on a collision course with the Supreme Court. And there are two massive legal hurdles standing in their way.

• Code is speech

You might think of a VPN as a tool, but in the eyes of the U.S. judicial system, software code is speech. In the landmark case Bernstein v. U.S. Department of Justice (9th Cir. 1999), the court ruled that software source code is protected by the First Amendment.

The court compared code to a language—just like French or German—that communicates ideas. So by banning the distribution of VPN software (as the HB 4938 Michigan bill proposes), the state is effectively engaging in “prior restraint” of free speech. You cannot ban a language just because someone might use it to conspire to commit a crime.

• The Dormant Commerce Clause

The U.S. Constitution gives Congress—not the states—the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and between states. This is known as the Dormant Commerce Clause.

There’s no Wisconsin or Michigan border station on the internet, so if a company in Switzerland sells a VPN subscription to a user in Milwaukee or Detroit, that is foreign commerce.

Courts have historically struck down state internet laws (like in American Libraries Association v. Pataki) because they impose an “undue burden” on interstate trade. A state cannot pass a law that forces a Swiss company to change its global software just to avoid selling to one guy in Detroit. It breaks the concept of a unified national market.

VPN Ban in the USA: Bluff or Near Future?

We don’t expect Michigan HB 4938 or Wisconsin AB 105/SB 130 to survive their first date with a federal judge. The First Amendment and Commerce Clause arguments against them are simply too strong. But to dismiss this movement as mere political theater is dangerous. The Overton window has shifted.

Is VPN legal in the U.S.? For now, the answer remains a definitive yes. But lawmakers have revealed their hand: they no longer see privacy as a default right but as a suspicious anomaly.

The real danger isn’t necessarily a total ban tomorrow. It’s a slow strangulation. We expect to see more “soft” censorship—pressure on App Stores to delist privacy tools or regulations that force payment processors to cut ties with VPN companies.

Whether you are a journalist protecting sources, a remote worker securing bank data, or just a traveler searching for a VPN to watch your home Netflix shows abroad, the reality is the same: the tools you rely on are officially in the crosshairs.

The digital exit door is still open. But with the state actively trying to close it, the question is, for how long?

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