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Appeals Court Denies Safe Harbor for Roommates.com
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed May 16, 2007 04:43 PM
from the appeals-court-says-don't-be-a-dick dept.
from the appeals-court-says-don't-be-a-dick dept.
Mariner writes "The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied Roommates.com Safe Harbor status under the Communications Decency Act in a lawsuit brought by the Fair Housing Councils of San Fernando Valley and San Diego. Roommates.com was accused of helping landlords discriminate against certain kinds of tenants due to a couple of questions on the Roommates.com registration form: gender and sexual orientation. 'Though it refused to rule on whether Roommates.com actually violated the Fair Housing Act, the Court did find that it lost Section 230 immunity because it required users to enter that information in order to proceed. As Judge Alex Kozinski put it in his opinion, "if it is responsible, in whole or in part, for creating or developing the information, it becomes a content provider and is not entitled to CDA immunity."'"
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Look, I just wanted a normal male roommate (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Look, I just wanted a normal male roommate (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Looks like an appropriate decision (Score:2, Insightful)
Not at all an appropriate decision (Score:5, Insightful)
> screening process can possibly be considered a common carrier under anyone's definition of the term.
You are correct... as far as that reasoning goes. But the CORRECT ruling (yea, good luck getting a sane ruling in CA) would have been to toss the case on the grounds that neither the "Fair Housing Act" nor the CDA pass Constituitional muster. The CDA fails on 1st and 10th Amendment grounds and the FHA on 10th. So it should have been tossed back into state courts.
Listen up pinheads, people have the right to be wrong. At least 'wrong' from your point of view. Since Stallman already has claimed Freedom Zero call this one Freedom -1. For if you claim the right to tell someone they are wrong and must agree with you, you are asserting yourself as their master. And the odds approach 100% that sooner or later everyone else is going to think one of your cherished beliefs/practices is 'wrong' and impose their will on you. And having given up the principles of Freedom you will have no moral argument to offer as to why you should be left in peace.
Tolerence isn't allowing people you agree with to do things you approve of, it is permitting people you don't like to do things you disapprove of so long as they don't use force or fraud against others. Yes that means yo have to tolerate the intolerant sometimes.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless a novel Constitutional argument was made, that would have been an incorrect ruling by the appeals court, since, any merits of the past Constitutional arguments that have been made and rejected by the Supreme Court aside, the most common Constitutional arguments against those acts have been made previously, and
"Force or fraud against others" (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the problem here is the definition of "force". In a very real way, discriminating landlords are "forcing" potential tenants to live somewhere else. I don't think of it as much different from making black people sit at the back of the bus. (Yes
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Am I the one hiring you? Then I can deny you a job for any reason I please. Example: I am denying you a job right now (assuming you don't currently work for me, which I think is likely :). You can't make me hire you, regardless of why you think I'm not.
Am I the one renting or selling you the place? Then I can in fact choose not to rent or sell for any r
Re:Not at all an appropriate decision (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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Incidentally, I'm perfectly willing to concede that case law, SCOTUS decisions, etc. are against me on this. But that still doesn't make it a fundamental human right.
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It actually, per the case law, covers all activities which might reasonably impact interstate markets; this includes activities not commercial in themselves (such as, at the outer extreme, growing wheat—the textbook example—or marijuana—from a more recent case—at home for one's own personal consumption).
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Throughout history there have been people who for whatever reason want to take advantage of others so we are stuck making laws to prevent that. Laws that are supposed to make people play nice together. For instance I'm not allowed to just walk up and punch you in the face no matter how good an idea I think that is.
My right to do what I want doesn't infringe on your right to live without being punched in the face.
Employment and housing laws are to make su
Roommates.com (Score:2, Interesting)
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Well at least thats better than not reading the comments one is responding to:
Re:Roommates.com (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Roommates.com (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a bit of a difference between a corporate-owned, professionally-managed apartment complex selecting applicants for leases, and a single person who needs a roommate in her apartment.
Do you think a 100lbs. single woman shouldn't be allowed to discriminate on the basis of gender when she's selecting roommates? If so, then you are a loon.
As far as I'm concerned, people should be able to pick whomever they want as their roommate, using any criteria they want.
Parent
Re:Roommates.com (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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And anyhow, it doesn't protect gays. Gays are not a protected class. I can put up a banner on one of my apartment buildings that says, "Not faggots allowed!" and while it would probably violate about a half dozen sign ordinances, it would be perfectly legal under fair housing laws.
On the other hand, if that banner said, "No blacks allowed!" I'd be in a world of hurt.
I can see how the judge could rule that way: sorta (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd much rather have missing fields
Re:I can see how the judge could rule that way: so (Score:2)
Re:I can see how the judge could rule that way: so (Score:2)
I don't know what the problem is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever you see ads in the paper for folks looking for roommates, you always see several things:
Female looking for female.
Male looking for female or male roommate
Gay man looking for roommate,
etc...
What's wrong with entering that information so you can be matched up with someone that you'll be compatible with?
If you were unknowingly matched up with a gay man, and you're a devout Evangelical Christian, boy, there's going to be some rough patches! The same goes with women who would feel really uncomfortable with rooming with a guy.
Geeze! Sometimes the law isn't realistic.
Re:I don't know what the problem is... (Score:5, Funny)
I smell sitcom!
Parent
Re:I don't know what the problem is... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Re:I don't know what the problem is... (Score:4, Informative)
What the court ruled is that it's not okay for a *landlord*, who is not living with the people, to discriminate on the basis of religion, race, creed, ethnicity, gender, etc. etc. So they are saying using an online roommate-finding website does not make it okay for a landlord to discriminate.
Parent
That's not what they're doing (Score:3, Interesting)
Fair housing doesn't always apply (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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I'm of the opinion that every time our elected leaders decide to make a new law, they should be required to remove a minimum of four existing laws from the books. Period. This would force our fearl
Re:I don't know what the problem is... (Score:5, Informative)
If you are going to be living with the person, then the fair housing act does not apply to you.
So, if you're actually looking for a roommate, then you can discriminate based on any criteria you want, including age, sexual preference, race, religion, hobbies, whether they'll sleep with you or not, etc.
The judge did not rule that they cannot ask about such things. The ruling was simply about Safe Harbor status. That is, since the information was required from the person looking for housing, and a landlord used it to find a tenant, and was found to have discriminated based on information furnished to them by roommates.com, then roommates.com could be found to be complicit in the discrimination. They could avoid this by making such fields optional, or by only passing along protected information to owners who will be sharing living space.
At least, that's my take from the article. I'm not a lawyer either, but I've been involved in a few court cases involving landlord/tenant law.
Parent
this is kindda goofy (Score:5, Insightful)
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Oh boy! Hatecrimes R Us! (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm, why is that bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm looking for a roommate, why shouldn't I be able to filter for gender and sexual orientation? For that matter, maybe I'm a racist jerk and don't want black or asian roommates. Isn't that my right, regardless of how silly it might seem to someone else?
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Sucks that we have to limit personal liberty to get people to be civil to each other, but there ya go.
What's legal here (B.C.) (Score:3, Insightful)
The B.C. Residential Tenancy Act [gov.bc.ca] allows for three sorts of discrimination: age, when it's a property specifically for older folks. Disability, when it's a property specifically for disabled folks. And just about anything else (particularly gender and sexual orientation) when there are shared kitchens and bathrooms involved.
Little else matters. If you can pay the rent (and come by the money lawfully), they can't turn you down.
...laura
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I swear, I sooo should move to Canada.
Seemingly verrides Carafano v. Metrosplash.com (Score:5, Interesting)
As regards violating the Fair Housing Act, there is a shared living exception [hud.gov]. It seems to me that if roommates.com added a "shared living" checkbox to its form, it could AJAX-open the additional fields regarding gender and sexuality, and thus avoid falling afoul of the FHA. Roommates.com would still not be covered by the Section 230 exception of the Communications Decency Act, but it wouldn't need it.
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This then presents a simple legal solution for roommates.com which from a practical point of view is no different from the current site: Just make the options male, female, and unspecified. People can continue to search for male/female roommates (or unspecified if you don't car
What the hell (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope they are atleast suing the landlords that were abusing this info. Thats the problem with information on the net, its accessible to everyone, weather they should have it or not. I understand nailing landlords to the cross for abusing this info, but I totaly fail to understand how this is the websites fault for supplying the information. Its even submitted by the people themselves...its not like it wasn't wanted to be known..
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Personal question, if you don't mind (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Personal question, if you don't mind (Score:4, Funny)
(I think that might be the reason they started requiring gender in ads for roommates...)
Parent
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Re:Very bad ruling (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd just like to point out how the word "discrimination" has been hijacked. Discrimination is a good, useful, and necessary thing. Whenever you make a choice about something being better than something else, that's discrimination. You want and need to discriminate.
For particular reasons, discrimination based on certain factors (race, color, religion, sex, and national origin) for certain purposes (housing, voting, employment, and public services) has been made illegal. Any other kind is perfectly legal.
Here, you've assumed that any kind of discrimination is bad. You're talking about illegal discrimination.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Some (but not all, IIRC) of the prohibitory provisions were either struck down or limited in applicability by the Supreme Court.
The safe harbor provisions, which provide a liability shield which extends to liability under other laws (pretty much all other laws that turn on the status of "publisher or speaker"), not just the prohibitory provisions of the CDA,