Appeals Court Denies Safe Harbor for Roommates.com

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."'"

Roommates.com

[Mazin07]

I don't claim any prior knowledge of roommates.com at all, but... 1. Were these fields optional? I wouldn't expect something like orientation to be a required question. The judge says it is, but I want to hear from somebody who's used the site. 2. Are all people who look at applications considered landlords, or only some of them?

Seemingly verrides Carafano v. Metrosplash.com

[michaelmalak]

Critically, this overrides what had been the common interpretation of Carafano v. Metrosplash.com [wikipedia.org] which was that form fill-in websites had the same immunity as free-text websites (and ISPs). This roommates.com decision says "no" -- matchmaker.com had immunity only because a) the offending information (Carafano's home address etc.) was posted in free-text fields of the form and b) posting such information violated matchmaker.com's terms of service.

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.

Personal question, if you don't mind

[Rix]

Why? As a straight man, I'd be more comfortable in general living with a lesbian than a straight woman I didn't want to get involved with.

That's not what they're doing

[Rix]

The fair housing groups are going after landlords not people looking for roommates. Craigslist was sued because it allowed ads from landlords specifying gender and religion.