The apartment
search website Roommates.com is susceptible to
discrimination lawsuits because the site allows users to
specify their gender, marital status, and sexual
orientation, the ninth U.S. circuit court of appeals
ruled Thursday in San Francisco.
The practice
violates fair housing laws, and the ruling sets a precedent
for the nature of regulating the Internet, which the court,
in an 8-3 ruling, said "was not meant to
create a lawless, no-man's land," the Los Angeles
Times reported Friday.
"A real estate
broker may not inquire as to the race of a prospective
buyer, and an employer may not inquire as to the religion of
a prospective employee," Chief Judge Alex Kozinski
wrote for the majority. "If such questions are
unlawful when posed face-to-face by telephone, they
don't magically become lawful when asked electronically
online."
The decision
counters the website's perceived immunity from such
lawsuits under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications
Decency Act, which frees websites from responsibility
for what users say online, according to Wired.
Christopher
Brancart, an attorney for the housing groups, said that
Wednesday's ruling proved that websites are responsible for
conduct and speech that would break the law in the
"physical world."
Timothy Alger, an
attorney for Roommates.com, questioned whether the
ruling would affect sites that specifically target gays or
members of various religious groups, according to the
Times. "We're neutral," Alger said. "We don't
have a dog in the fight. A woman can search for a man, a
straight person can search for a gay person or have no
preference.
The three
dissenting judges in the case called the ruling an
"unprecedented expansion of liability" that could curb the
Web's growth. Three weeks ago, the seventh circuit
court of appeals in Chicago rejected a similar case
pertaining to Craigslist.com.
Alger said that
the website's owners, three brothers who started the
business in Arizona, are considering whether to appeal the
case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"It is important
to remember that Roommates.com is a site that enables
people to find other people who want to share homes," Alger
told Wired. "Many users of the site share their
bedrooms. No court has addressed whether roommate postings
violate the Fair Housing Act, or whether the First
Amendment protects such postings -- although
Roommates.com has repeatedly asked for such a
decision. We believe the government has no business
regulating the selection of roommates or advertising
for roommates."
The case will now
go back to the trial court level, where Roommates.com
was initially sued by the Fair Housing Councils of San Diego
and the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles in 2003.
The suit was dismissed by the lower court because the
site was deemed an information service, protected
under the Communications Decency Act. In an appeal in May
2007, Los Angeles's federal court ruled that
Roommates.com lost the protection by mandating users
to answer the criteria and allowing users to filter
possible roommates by those categories. According to
Wired, the appeals court later withdrew that
opinion and reheard arguments in December 2007. (The
Advocate)
