Supreme Court sidesteps ruling on scope of Internet liability shield

The Supreme Court of the United States Thursday declined to hear a case that may have impacted Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act. Social media companies like YouTube, Google and Twitter will likely remain protected for the foreseeable future against claims that other entities that publish content must be responsive to. New York Times photo

The New York Times
The Supreme Court handed twin victories to technology platforms on Thursday, sidestepping an effort to limit a powerful liability shield for user posts and ruling that a law allowing suits for aiding terrorism did not apply to the ordinary activities of social media companies.

The court’s unanimous decision in one of the cases, Twitter v. Taamneh, No. 21-1496, effectively resolved both cases and allowed the justices to duck difficult questions about the scope of a 1996 law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

In a brief, unsigned opinion in the case concerning the liability shield, Gonzalez v. Google, No. 21-1333, the court said it would not “address the application of Section 230 to a complaint that appears to state little, if any, plausible claim for relief.” The court instead returned the case to the appeals court “to consider plaintiffs’ complaint in light of our decision in Twitter.”

The Twitter case concerned Nawras Alassaf, who was killed in a terrorist attack at the Reina nightclub in Istanbul in 2017 for which the Islamic State claimed responsibility. His family sued Twitter, Google and Facebook, saying they had allowed ISIS to use their platforms to recruit and train terrorists. MORE