The Texas Supreme Court recently ruled to uphold proceedings in a lawsuit against Facebook for its involvement in enabling sex trafficking through its site, an activity that is strictly prohibited in the Communications Decency Act.
The lawsuit alleges that Facebook was aware of the activity and has profited from the operations.
“My team is humbled by this order and for the opportunity to work for our clients,” attorney Annie McAdams, who is representing the plaintiffs, told Jurist. “Our clients fought over two years for the right to even bring their case.”
The three plaintiffs in the lawsuit were all minors when they were drawn into the trafficking. The other courts involved in the case have found that failing to warn or protect users from such dangers does not put Facebook in a position of liability.
“This court, while bound only by decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, is generally hesitant to contradict the ‘overwhelming weight of authority’ from both lower federal courts and state courts on federal questions,” the court stated.
However, the Supreme Court is diving deeper into Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, stating that the scope of this section needs to be further explored.
“The sweeping immunity courts have read into Section 230 should be scaled back or at least reconsidered,” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said.
All of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit became entangled in sex trafficking through interactions with men on Facebook. They all alleged to have been raped in addition to suffering other types of harm.
While the Texas high court’s ruling does not yet find Facebook guilty, it finds enough reason to investigate whether to allow the litigation to proceed.
“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected, or any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in Paragraph 1,” Section 230 states.
