Court Rules Facebook FOSTA Sex Trafficking Lawsuits Will Go Ahead

When Congress was preparing to pass the 2018 FOSTA/SESTA law supposedly aimed at curbing online sex trafficking, Facebook and its Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg vocally supported the bill. The legislation created a loophole in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—considered the foundation of online free expression—that would hold sites responsible if advertisers or other third parties used the platforms to promote “sex trafficking.” But on Tuesday, a Texas state appeals court ruled that Facebook must now face three lawsuits brought under the very law that Sandberg supported. According to a report by Courthouse News, Facebook’s claim that Section 230 grants it immunity against the lawsuits was tossed aside by the a panel of judges on the Texas 14th Court of Appeals. Before FOSTA/SESTA became law two years ago, Section 230 protected online publishers against liability for the content of third-party posts. In asking the court to dismiss the lawsuits, Facebook claimed that it should continue to receive that immunity. The three lawsuits involve underage girls who say that they were violently forced into non-consensual sex work by men they met through Facebook. All three “Jane Does” are represented by lawyer Annie McAdams, who has sued the business-software firm Salesforce under FOSTA provisions, claiming that the company provided infrastructure for the online classified site Backpage, which now faces criminal prosecution for alleged sex-trafficking related offenses. “Congress was quite clear that the CDA was never intended to protect websites who knowingly facilitate trafficking,” McAdams told the legal site Law360, saying that she hopes the Facebook cases will ultimately be heard by the Texas Supreme Court, and even the United States Supreme Court. “This is a brand-new area of law that’s developing, and we are taking some pretty strong positions. So it’s important that the courts, even the Texas Supreme Court, rule on this.” One Judge, Christopher Tracy, filed a dissenting opinion in the Facebook cases, asking the state’s Supreme Court to step in to deal with the lawsuits. “Federal law grants Facebook immunity from suits such as these,” Tracy wrote in his dissent. Photo By Gertalt / Pixabay