A federal appeals court dismissed a discrimination suit against craigslist, ruling Friday the online classified advertising site is immune from accusations that it violates the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968.
At issue is whether the site can be liable for allowing its customers to post discriminatory housing ads that say, for example, whites only, or those that forbid gays and lesbians. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in upholding a lower court judge, ruled craigslist should be treated like an internet service provider and hence is not liable for the postings of third parties.
The court noted that dating sites that promote discrimination are perfectly legal, however -- since people are legally free to turn down dates for flimsy or racist reasons.
As for other websites, the court said the ruling is actually very clear.
"The message to website operators is clear: If you don't encourage illegal content, or design your website to require users to input illegal content, you will be immune," the court wrote.
Both those cases hinged on possible violations of the Fair Housing Act. I'm not a lawyer, but my quick search suggests that sex discrimination law confines itself to areas where actual disadvantage is at issue, like housing, employment, etc., rather than protecting the rights of men to weigh in on the burning issue of the she-pee. I don't think NetDoc and his lawyers will be losing any sleep over this one. And invoking Lester Maddox to break down the barriers to the Women's Only Forum risks trivializing the real history of racism in America.
The Fed in me, the one that interprets regulations and compliance of vrious state programs with those regs for a living, would interept the impact of those rulings entirely differently.
In the first ruling, the curt has only said that a website can not be held liable for the discriminatory postings that members may make. That makes sense and in the case of SB, Pete goes one better by having mods who would quickly pull the posts once one was reported, and is in effect operating well above the minimum legal standard - a very good thing.
In the second ruling, the court is saying that as long a site does not encourage discrimination or require illegal content, the site is immune. That is where it would get fuzzy as it could be viewed that creating sub forums that can only be accessed by classes of people based on sex, race, etc, is encouaging discrimination, even if not actually practicing it (which is still a potentially separate issue).
Is it trivial? Perhaps, but where does it stop and when does it become non trivial? After all if you talked to many whites in the south in the 1950's, they would have viewed the issue of segregation as trivial as it was just impacting blacks and not whites. The "if it does not affect me, it is not a big deal" logic. A question to consider is could someone request to start a KKK dviver forum open only to KKK members? On the one hand - no, as it would create an environment that would encourage discrimination. On the other hand, if you let one group have their own forum and not another group are you discriminating? After all, the American **** Party clearly has a right to free speech and all the protections thereof even if they are pretty much by party platform discriminatory in their beliefs and practices. And freedom of speech is an issue the court consider to be very important.
In the case of such a request, the middle ground would perhpas be to do what we do in all the other forums that get volatile from time to time - moderate the hell out of it to ensure any posts violating the TOS are removed and the offenders disciplined and/or banned per the same rules that apply equally to all members. However the simpler solution and more common sense solution is to avoid the whole issue by not allowing forums that only members of a specific race, gender, etc can join. Which is where the women's only forum suddenly gets non-trivial for Pete and the board in its potential long term ramifications.
Babyduck's opt in suggestion is a good one. Make it an opt in forum *but* make it one anyone can opt into regardless of gender. It will eliminate the drive by posters but will not prohibit any one from getting access for legitimate reasons.
And again, to put it in perspective, the idea is not one of splitting legal hairs under the current and ever changing interpretation of the law but rather one of right and wrong and of having a policy that does not run the board aground or make it a potential target as a legal test case for internet forums sometime in the future.
