Posted on 05/17/2007 9:03:16 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
SAN FRANCISCO (UPI) -- A court in San Francisco ruled that a roommate-matching Web site may be held accountable for what users say about their preferences.
A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court ruled in favor of two California fair housing groups that brought the complaint against Roommate.com, saying the Web site violates the Fair Housing Act by allowing users to specify roommate preferences based on sex, race, religion and sexual orientation, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
The ruling took away the main argument of the defense: that a 1996 ruling granting immunity to Internet service providers that transmit unlawful material supplied by others extended to the case. The judges ruled that the law was not applicable because Roommates.com created the menus that invite the unlawful information.
Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University, said the decision represented an important shift.
"To date," he said, "The law has been almost uniform that a Web site isn't liable for what its users say. The problem here is that the Web site offered up choices for users to structure their remarks. That creates a hole plaintiffs can exploit."
Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Unless the want to choose between a Colt or a S&W.
You’re right. I’m not sure. But “3 judge panel”+”federal appeals court” usually means a circuit.
Precedence or Penumbra? /sarcasm
“Ninth Circuit”
Republicans should try to get control of Congress and the White House so they can break up the “Ninth Circuit”.
[/s]
[snicker — the Pubbies squandered their majority]
The choice of a roommate is not the same as the choice of a renter or purchaser. The gov’t cannot limit the right to choose who you live with.
I hope not.
Apparently it is, according to these nitwits.
Yup. It is all part of the communist manifesto for taking over the US. Weaken morality, weaken the family.
And it’s so much better now.
The rotting robes adjudicating themselves into a coroner?
If this survives the circuit, we are done for.
The UN Charter will be replacing our Constitution and Bill of Rights faster than I feared.
That's because it's become synonymous with "overturned." It'll probably be a verb in the future: "That decision was 9th Circuited."
I thought the first ammendment guranteed a right to freely associate. This right to associate implies a converse right to “dis-associate” or associate with folks “other than” those who are not of like mind etc...
If one case, just one case were argued from this point of view, maybe these “Fair Housing, everybody MUST mingle” Nazis would get their a$$es kicked.
Is this really the same thing? It doesn't seem to be about owners/landlords denying the rental based on personal preferences; it's about a tenant already paying rent advertising for a roomate to share the bills. I can't see how that counts towards fair housing in the same vein as an owner renting the property in the first place.
With that aside, I can see how this ruling becomes extended to cover posted comments on other websites, such as Free Republic. If this stands, I bet someone will use the precedent to force the owners of Free Republic to be responsible for all posts by anyone on this site. Then you'd really have a problem with mischievous dissenters signing up to intentionally post "wrongful content" as a prelude to attacking the site legally.
-PJ
What’s idiotic about this ruling is that the preferences are really a service to potential homehunters who would never be seriously considered for the spot. Now they have to search and waste time chasing down and/or interviewing people who will reject them. (Of course, if they hide their preferences until later—say after they are accepted or even move in—and then are asked to leave, there’s probably a lawsuit waiting to happen.)
This site set up a questionnaire that shaped the posted content. Posters were required to choose between options generated by the site. Those options went into the post, and therefore the site was partially responsible for the content.
Since the site was partially responsible for content, it is no longer covered under the safe harbor provisions. Note that the court ruled that any potentially law-violating content in the free-form submission part of the site is still covered by safe harbor (although one idiot judge dissented on that).
So it’s against the law to specify the kind of person you would like to have as your own roommate? And liberals claim to be AGAINST intrusive, in-your-bedroom government? What a bunch of frauds liberals are.
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