Legal News

Appeals Court: No discrimination immunity for bulletin board web sites

By Jason Siegel

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that a website can be sued for violating California's Fair Housing Act by matching roommates based on their age, sex and parenthood, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The majority took issue with the design of the website, which requires users to select if they are accepting of all people or prefer living with a specific type of person - based on their sexual orientation, race, gender, etc.

Sites are remain immune "if you don't encourage illegal content, or design your website to require users to input illegal content," Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote, according to the Times.

Dissenting judges said the ruling could slow the Internet's growth, making it difficult to know which activities are immune under federal law.

Three weeks ago, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals broke with five other circuits to withhold broad immunity from liability for Craigslist.com. The court ruled that while the site wasn't liable for discriminatory rental ads posted by users, the law did not include broad-based immunity, The National Law Journal reported.

UPDATE: Read The Recorder's coverage of the story here

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on April 04, 2008 (boomark / email).