California has rejected a move to force porn actors to use condoms, dental dams, and even goggles during filming in order to prevent sexually transmitted infections.

Following six hours of impassioned testimony from nearly 100 actors and producers fiercely opposed to the stringent regulations, members of the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards board voted 3-2 in favor of the rules, failing to reach the four-vote threshold necessary for adoption.

After the vote was finalised, the crowd inside the hearing room in Oakland erupted with cheers and applause.

“These regulations were based in stigma rather than science, and would have severely hurt adult performers,” said Eric Paul Leue, the executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for the adult entertainment industry, in a statement following the vote. “We look forward to working with Cal/OSHA on sensible regulation that respects performers choices.”

Cal/OSHA, which drafted the rules, released the following statement after the vote: “While the standards board voted against adopting the proposed regulation, condoms are still required under the existing bloodborne pathogens standard in California and nationwide. This includes adult films.”

Speaking before the board, Leue had denounced the process by which the regulations were drafted, calling it “patronizing, cluttered with stereotypes and a sexist approach that strips performers of their reproductive rights and personal and professional medical privacy”.

“We’re not opposed to regulation. We’re opposed to this regulation,” he said.

The process of crafting the regulations began more than six years ago when the Aids Healthcare Foundation, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization, first petitioned the state to update and clarify its standards for workers who may come into contact with “bloodborne pathogens”. The existing regulations did require protective barriers for workers who come into contact with bodily fluids but had been largely applied in medical settings, not the adult film industry.

“Many young people get their information from these films, and the message they get is that the only hot sex is unsafe sex,” said Michael Weinstein, president of AHF. Weinstein, a dogged advocate for condoms, also helped pass legislation in Los Angeles county requiring the use of condoms in pornography.

“First and foremost, it’s about protecting the performers,” Weinstein said.

But many performers and public health experts argued that the new rules would be less safe than the existing industry standard promoted by the Free Speech Coalition, called Performer Availability Scheduling Services. Under that system, performers are tested for STIs every two weeks, and the results are stored in a private database. Producers then hire performers who are deemed “available” by the database, without learning any additional information about their medical status.

By contrast, the new regulations required performers to be tested for STIs every three months.

“This law denies bodily autonomy to an already marginalized population, and it denies us our voice,” said Ela Darling, a porn performer who traveled from her home in North Hollywood to speak at the hearing.

“The operative word in the adult industry is adult. We have the ability to think for ourselves. This isn’t big daddy porn boss telling all the children what to do.”

Darling expressed the common concern that passage of the new rules would result in the porn industry leaving California or going underground. A former librarian, Darling worried that she would not be able to return to her former career.

“Porn closes a lot of doors for you. I have a master’s degree, but what is that going to do now that my porn is on the internet?” she said.

“My sexual health is actually a lot more safe now that I’m in the porn industry, because of our testing protocols,” said Lotus Lain, another performer who spoke at the hearing. “The Aids Healthcare Foundation is attacking our industry because it’s headline grabbing. They should focus their HIV prevention money and efforts in the communities where HIV is actually on the rise.”

Dr David Holland, a professor at the Emory University School of Medicine, urged the board to reject the rules, saying: “We’ve tried to tell people what kind of sex they can or can’t have, and that doesn’t work. The only thing that this kind of rule does is push the activity underground where you can’t see it.”

Courtney Mulhearn-Pearson of the San Francisco Aids Foundation said the rules were the result of “the same misguided reasoning that produced HIV criminalization laws”.

The battle over condoms in porn is not over, however. A statewide ballot initiative mandating the use of condoms in porn proposed by Weinstein will appear on the November 2016 ballot.