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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."'"
You don't have to get all pissy about the "no fags or bitches" part of my flier.
I don't see how a content site that collects confidential information that may be used in a screening process can possibly be considered a common carrier under anyone's definition of the term.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
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?
While I kind of find the judge denying safe harbor a bit harsh, I do sort of appreciate the whole "required" versus optional form data. When I fill out forms for this and that on the web, I really get annoyed when every gorram field is required. I understand that the more complete the info, the better able to provide services, but honestly, forcing email or phone on peole is just likely to either a)turn users off from going any further or b)cause users to enter fake info.
:)
I'd much rather have missing fields than false info... it's EASY to parse for missing fields, but false info can really pollute or skew things. I know that on "stop bugging me" registrations for some software, I'll just enter F***@you.com or some other random made up address that expresses my displeasure at being forced to provide such information. To whomever has the email address "F***@you.com" I apologize for the extra spam I've caused you to receive from the likes of Real Networks, Apple, and others.
The Digital Sorceress
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.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
Since the site's purpose is clearly to find roommates and not tenants, you should have more latitude in what kind of questions you can ask. When you accept a roommate, you do much more than engage in landlord/tenant relationship. Finding a roommate is a process of creating a household. And anyone should be able to choose what kind of household they live in.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
So when some redneck moron finds out he's staying with a gay guy because roommates.com had to change things to continue to be protected by Section 230 and he therefore didn't know, and inevitably kicks the everliving shit out of him, does that mean Roommates.com is also responsible for the shit-kicking?
Let's stop dilly-dallying and just change "-1: Overrated" to "-1: Disagree" or "-1: Doesn't Subscribe to Groupthink".
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?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
The B.C. Residential Tenancy Act 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
If I'm a landlord, then I should not be able to discriminate based on race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, etc, but DUDE... this is for ROOMMATES. Although discrimination is wrong in principal, individuals sharing a house or apartment with one another really need to make sure they're compatible. I'm a lesbian... so I might be willing to share my apartment with a gay man, but certainly not a straight one. Likewise, a straight woman really might be uncomfortable sharing an apartment with me. What's wrong with helping people to filter out their choices?
The Digital Sorceress
The fair housing act doesn't always apply, there are times when it is legal to discriminate based on gender etc. http://www.hud.gov/offices/fheo/FHLaws/yourrights. cfm
There is an exemption for owner occupied buildings (i.e. you want to rent out that extra bedroom in your house). Also if you are just looking for a roommate, you are not the landlord so it would similarly not apply, in fact I would think this would be protected under the 1st amendment as freedom of association.
I would agree with you if this was about landlords, but this is a site for finding roommates. You should be able to choose the type of people you live with. If a woman doesn't want to live with a man because that makes her uncomfortable, that should be her right. Same with a homosexual and a fundamentalist Christian, a man with very fundamentalist parents and a woman, a man and a homosexual man, etc. A person should not be forced to room with another person that makes them uncomfortable, even if those reasons are bigoted. The site gives its users options to help them find roommates that meet this requirement.
As regards violating the Fair Housing Act, there is a shared living exception. 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.
How on earth is it Roommates.com's fault is LANDLORDS are abusing the system to discriminate? Be like looking someon up on Myspace, and denying them a job because of some pictures put up. Is it Myspace.com's fault?
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..
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.
spend all their time in the gym
There is a reason we do this, and it isn't fitness.
This seems like perfectly decent information to ask. Personally, I would like to know the gender and sexual orientation of my roommate before I go into an apartment deal with them. I don't think it is the site's fault that people are abusing the information. Yes, they required the information. However, if you don't want to give it, then don't sign up!
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.
> I don't see how a content site that collects confidential information that may be used in a
> 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.
Democrat delenda est
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.
This does seem pretty ridiculous, and clearly not very many people get in trouble for placing such ads, but there is some case law supporting it. In the roommates.com case, since they not only encouraged placing such statements, but seemingly also more-or-less required it, they were exposing themselves to liability. Plus, since they have much deeper pockets than your typical "SWF seeks same", they were much more likely to be taken to court.
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, were not.
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.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
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).
"WANTED: Female roomate. NO FATTIES."
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
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, there might be a difference between public-run buses and private housing, but I'm pretty sure a private bus company couldn't get away with telling black people to sit at the back of their buses, either.)
Furthermore, housing discrimination affects not just the denied tenant, but, on a larger scale, the housing market and opportunities for many other tenants.
So I would actually mostly agree with your statement there, but instead of "force or fraud", I'd say people can do what I disapprove of as long as it doesn't AFFECT others. Yes, that's rather broad, but there are many cases where I think people should be able to do what I disapprove of even if they do affect me. They simply no longer get a blanket pardon once they do.