Wisconsin Drops Its VPN Ban Clause: Why These Keep Failing

An earlier version of a Wisconsin bill banned the use of VPNs. Then state senator Van Wanggaard removed the section, and the ban quietly disappeared. It is a small legislative footnote, but it captures a pattern that keeps repeating across the US: a VPN restriction gets bolted onto an age-verification bill, generates alarm, and then gets stripped out once someone works out what it would actually mean.

What happened in Wisconsin

The VPN clause was part of a broader age-verification effort. As written, it would have restricted VPN use, presumably to stop people from bypassing the age checks the bill was meant to enforce. Senator Wanggaard cut that section, and the bill moved on without it. VPNs remain legal in Wisconsin, as they are across the US.

This matters because “Wisconsin bans VPNs” is the kind of headline that spreads before the correction catches up. The reality is the opposite: a proposed restriction was considered and then rejected, which is the system working roughly as it should.

The pattern behind it

Wisconsin is not the first. VPN-restriction language has surfaced in several state bills, most notably Michigan’s HB4938, which we covered in our Michigan VPN ban explainer. The template is consistent. A legislator writing an age-verification bill realises that VPNs can sidestep location-based age checks, and adds a clause to block them. Then reality intrudes.

The problem is that banning VPNs is close to impossible without breaking things that matter. VPNs are core infrastructure. Businesses use them for secure remote access, banks and hospitals rely on them, and millions of ordinary people use them for legitimate privacy. A blanket ban would hit all of that to stop teenagers dodging an age gate. The Electronic Frontier Foundation put it bluntly in 2025: lawmakers who want to ban VPNs mostly do not understand what they are proposing.

So the clauses tend to get removed, either because a colleague flags the collateral damage or because the tech industry and civil-liberties groups push back. Wisconsin is the latest example of the walk-back.

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Are VPNs at risk of being banned in the US?

Not in any broad sense. No US state has moved a VPN ban into law, and the federal picture is the same. VPNs are legal to use across the United States, and the repeated failure of these clauses suggests a real ban faces steep practical and legal obstacles. Our guide to VPN legality by country puts the US in global context: broad VPN bans exist mainly in authoritarian states like China, Russia and Iran, not in democracies.

That said, the direction of travel is worth watching. Lawmakers clearly know the VPN workaround exists, which is why these clauses keep appearing. The more common approach, seen in the UK’s House of Lords debate, is not to ban VPNs outright but to restrict their use by minors specifically. That is a narrower and more plausible target, and it is the version to keep an eye on.

What it means for you

For now, nothing changes. Using a VPN in Wisconsin, or anywhere in the US, is legal, and the removed clause never took effect. If you use a VPN to protect your browsing or to reach content restricted in your state, you are on solid legal ground.

The broader takeaway is that VPN access in democratic countries is holding, defended in practice by how deeply the technology is woven into normal life. For general privacy while these bills churn, an audited no-logs provider is the sensible baseline. NordVPN leads our comparison at 4.63/5, and Proton VPN is the Swiss privacy-first alternative. Our age-verification crackdown guide tracks the wider legislative wave these clauses keep hitching a ride on.