Legal Tides Changing for User-Generated Content - The Roommates.com Suit
(Page 3 of 4 )
You would expect a dating web site to ask its users to specify what they’re looking for in a partner, including sexual orientation. In other matching situations, there are laws that prevent certain questions from being asked, because it is illegal to discriminate based on race, sex, religion, and sexual orientation. That’s why you’ll never see any position posted on a job hunting web site that specifies applicants must be straight or gay (or bi, except for bi-lingual).
In addition to employment situations, many states forbid discrimination in housing situations. Enter Roommates.com. As you probably guessed from the name, this web site matches people looking to share housing situations. In order to match users, it asks them for certain information about what they want in a roommate – including sexual orientation. Oops.
Turns out there are housing discrimination laws that cover this very situation. So the Fair Housing Councils of the San Fernando Valley and San Diego sued Roommates.com. They alleged that the site violated the federal Fair Housing Act and California state housing discrimination laws. While a federal district court sided with Roommates.com, a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. You’re welcome to wade through the entire 54-page PDF of the opinion, or you could just keep reading for the rough summary.
The majority was led by Chief Judge Alex Kozinski. He denied Section 230 protection to Roommates.com on two counts. First, he said the site helped “to develop unlawful content” with its questionnaire, which every registered user had to fill out. Its structure, with preprogrammed drop-down menus, apparently made it impossible to avoid answering the offending questions. Additionally, since site users could search for roommates based on illegally discriminatory criteria, Judge Kozinski said that made Roommates.com an “information content provider.” As such, it isn’t protected by Section 230.
Judge Kozinski draws an appropriate comparison when making his ruling. “If such questions are unlawful when posed face-to-face or by telephone, they don’t magically become lawful when asked electronically online,” he wrote. “The Communications Decency Act was not meant to create a lawless no man’s land on the Internet.”
Next: What Do These Rulings Mean? >>
More Search Engine News Articles
More By Terri Wells
