Supreme Court rejects case against Reddit over child porn, sex trafficking

The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined a chance to strike a blow to the legal shield protecting Big Tech in a case against Reddit over child pornography allegations.

The high court refused to hear the case of Jane Does No. 1-6 v. Reddit, which was brought by a group of parents and children who are victims of sex trafficking. The suit was against Reddit for child porn being posted on its platform.

The parents of the children had asked the Supreme Court to weigh Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which generally gives social media platforms immunity from litigation based on what third parties post online.

“Child pornography is the root cause of much of the sex trafficking that occurs in the world today, and it is primarily traded on the internet, through websites that claim immunity from suit under the Communications Decency Act,” they argued in court papers. “Reddit creates a thriving platform for child pornography and sex trafficking.”

The parents said a 2018 law — the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act/Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act — is an exception to the protection given to Reddit under Section 230. The statute allows for civil suits against anyone who knowingly benefits from child porn and sex trafficking.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed and ruled the internet platform has to be held liable for its own conduct — not that of users.

The ruling prompted the parents and their children to ask the high court to reconsider the case.

But on Tuesday, the justices declined to do so without comment. It would have taken four justices to hear the case.

A spokesperson from Reddit did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In its court filing, the company argued the victims wanted the platform held liable for conduct it should have known about. Instead, the company said the law allows lawsuits only when a plaintiff can prove the platform contributed to criminal conduct.

“Reddit works hard ‘to locate and prevent the sharing of child pornography and other illegal material’ on its platform,” the company said in its court filing. “Reddit gives all users the ability to flag posts or comments as ‘sexual or suggestive content involving minors’ and employs ‘dedicated teams’ that remove such content, ban the users who share it, and ‘create engineering solutions to detect and prevent’ similar misbehavior in the future.”

The justices also declined earlier this month to strike a blow to Section 230 in a pair of cases brought by the families of victims of terrorist attacks against Big Tech.

The families tried to hold Twitter, Google and Facebook accountable for letting ISIS use its platform.

They claimed the companies aided and abetted the terrorists and should be held liable under anti-terrorism laws and shouldn’t be able to escape lawsuits due to Section 230.

The high court, though, rejected claims against the tech companies.

The justices didn’t weigh into how far federal law goes in shielding companies from posting on their sites. Instead, the justices ruled that the families failed to show sufficiently firm connections between general terrorist activity online and the specific attacks that killed their relatives.

“Plaintiffs’ allegations are insufficient to establish that these defendants aided and abetted ISIS in carrying out the relevant attack,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court. “They essentially portray defendants as bystanders, watching passively as ISIS carried out its nefarious schemes. Such allegations do not state a claim for culpable assistance or participation.”