Section 230 Once Again Applies to Claims Over Offline Sexual Abuse–Doe v. Grindr
John Doe, a 13 year old, created a Grindr profile and connected with Pritt. They met offline and engaged in sex. Doe sued Grindr for negligence and IIED. Grindr successfully defends on Section 230 grounds. ICS Provider. Yes. Cite to…
Louisiana’s Age Authentication Mandate Avoids Constitutional Scrutiny Using a Legislative Drafting Trick–Free Speech Coalition v. LeBlanc
You may have heard of this legislative drafting trick before. The legislature passes a law that’s likely unconstitutional, but the law doesn’t provide for enforcement by any state actors. Instead, the law creates a “bounty” system that rewards bounty hunters…
Section 230 Applies to Employee’s Post on Government-Operated Internal Message Board–Montanino v. New York City Dep’t of Sanitation
The New York City Department of Sanitation runs an internal message board for employees. An as-yet-unidentified employee posted a message to the board regarding a civil-service test cheating scandal. The pseudonymous message claimed that the plaintiff leaked the answers to…
Comments on the Ruling Declaring California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code (AADC) Unconstitutional–NetChoice v. Bonta
[Sorry it’s take me this long to get this blog post off my desk. I hope it was worth the wait.] We’ve seen a flood of terrible Internet laws in the past few years, including the California Age-Appropriate Design Code…
Does California’s Anti-Discrimination Law Ban Ad Targeting?–Liapes v. Facebook
This opinion indicates that Facebook–and by implication, every other ad network–could violate California’s Unruh Act (an anti-discrimination law) by targeting third-party ads based on age, gender, or other protected criteria. The court reaches this shocking conclusion by cutting several analytical…
Laura Loomer Loses Litigation (Again)–Loomer v. Zuckerberg
Loomer produces trash content, which got her banned at Facebook and Twitter. In response, she has brought several trash lawsuits, which have gone as well as you’d expect. Her latest trash lawsuit claimed that social media, the government, and Procter…
I Filed an Amicus Brief Against New York’s Editorial Transparency Law
Earlier this week, TechFreedom (led by Corbin Barthold and Andy Jung) and I filed an amicus brief with the Second Circuit against N.Y. General Business Law Section 394-ccc, the 2022 law that requires social media platforms to disclose their editorial…
Two Separate Courts Reiterate That Online Age Authentication Mandates Are Unconstitutional
[I will blog the NetChoice v. Bonta ruling very soon.] Many state legislatures draft Internet regulations without any genuine concern for whether or not the laws violate the First Amendment. This isn’t a partisan thing; both Democrats and Republicans do…
Sixth Circuit Dismisses Online Jawboning Case–Changizi v. DHHS
[Note: this post does NOT cover the Fifth Circuit’s ruling in Missouri v. Biden, which also addressed government jawboning regarding COVID misinformation. Missouri v. Biden, 2023 WL 5821788 (5th Cir. Sept. 8, 2023). The Fifth Circuit ruled that some government…
Facebook Can Reject Unwanted Ads–Newton v. Meta
This is yet another online content removal lawsuit, and it reaches the obvious and inevitable result that dozens of cases have reached before it. The plaintiffs sought to run Facebook ads for the movie “Beautiful Blue Eyes,” a movie about…