Browse Cases
207 resultsFair Hous. Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com, LLC
Issue: Whether Roommates.com was immune under § 230 for designing a mandatory registration process that required users to disclose and filter by sex, sexual orientation, and familial status — characteristics protected under the Fair Housing Act.
Why It Matters: The leading Ninth Circuit decision defining when a platform becomes a "co-developer" of user content and loses § 230 immunity. Established the "material contribution" test: a platform loses immunity when it materially contributes to the unlawful character of content by structuring how content is created and eliciting the illegal elements. Roommates.com distinguished Carafano's broad immunity rule and articulated the outer boundary of § 230 — a platform that designs its product to generate unlawful content is not a passive host but an active content developer.
View on CourtListener →Chicago Lawyers' Comm. for Civil Rights Under Law, Inc. v. Craigslist, Inc.
Issue: Whether Craigslist could be held liable under the Fair Housing Act's advertising prohibition for providing the online platform on which users posted discriminatory housing notices.
Why It Matters: The Seventh Circuit's definitive § 230 statement on platform liability for user-generated discriminatory housing ads, reaching the opposite outcome from the Ninth Circuit's Roommates.com on closely analogous facts. Easterbrook's opinion reflects a textualist approach: the platform does not "make, print, or publish" discriminatory ads; users do. The case represents a significant counterpoint to the Ninth Circuit's material-contribution standard and illustrates the circuit divide on when platform architecture transforms a neutral host into a content developer.
View on CourtListener →Carafano v. Metrosplash.com, Inc.
Issue: Whether Matchmaker.com lost § 230 immunity because it provided a structured multiple-choice questionnaire whose user-supplied answers, combined with user-uploaded photos, constituted a false and harassing profile of a third party.
Why It Matters: Established that a website's use of structured questionnaires and profile templates does not strip it of § 230 immunity unless the platform's structure itself contributes to the harmful or illegal character of the content. The Ninth Circuit's broad reading of § 230 in Carafano was significantly qualified five years later in Roommates.com, which held that a platform loses immunity when its mandatory questionnaire elicits content that is itself unlawful.
View on CourtListener →Blumenthal v. Drudge
Issue: Whether AOL was immune under § 230 for hosting the Drudge Report when AOL paid Drudge $3,000 per month, had exclusive rights to distribute his column, and retained contractual authority to edit or remove content it found objectionable.
Why It Matters: Extended § 230 immunity to platforms that have ongoing commercial relationships with content creators, pay them for content, and retain contractual editing rights — as long as the platform does not actually author the content at issue. Blumenthal established that the immunity analysis turns on actual exercise of editorial control, not the platform's power or contractual right to do so. The opinion's candid acknowledgment that the result may not have been what Congress intended has made it a touchstone in debates over § 230 reform.
View on CourtListener →Zeran v. America Online, Inc.
Issue: Whether § 230(c)(1) bars a distributor liability claim against an online service provider that had notice of defamatory third-party postings and allegedly failed to remove them promptly.
Why It Matters: The landmark foundational decision interpreting § 230. Zeran held that § 230 creates complete immunity from any claim that treats a platform as the publisher or speaker of third-party content — including the distributor liability theory that would arise from notice of defamatory material. The Fourth Circuit's broad reading has been adopted by virtually every circuit court to address the question. Zeran remains the controlling interpretive framework and the starting point for nearly every § 230 analysis in the decades since.
View on CourtListener →Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co.
Issue: Whether Prodigy was liable as a publisher of defamatory statements posted by a user, given that Prodigy voluntarily exercised editorial control over content on its boards.
Why It Matters: The direct legislative catalyst for § 230. Congress enacted § 230(c)(1) specifically to reverse the Stratton Oakmont result and eliminate the perverse incentive it created: under Stratton Oakmont, a platform that chose to moderate content assumed publisher liability, while a platform that did nothing was shielded as a mere distributor. § 230 was designed to encourage good Samaritan moderation by immunizing platforms that moderate from publisher liability.
View on CourtListener →Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc.
Issue: Whether CompuServe was liable as a publisher or distributor of defamatory statements appearing in a third-party newsletter carried on its online information service.
Why It Matters: The foundational pre-§ 230 defamation case for online services. Cubby established the publisher/distributor distinction in the internet context, holding that a platform which exercises no editorial control is treated as a distributor — not a publisher — and is liable only if it knew or should have known of the defamatory content. This decision gave rise to the "Moderator's Dilemma": when the later Stratton Oakmont decision held that a platform that exercises any editorial control becomes a publisher, platforms faced a perverse incentive to do nothing. Congress enacted § 230 specifically to dissolve that dilemma.
View on CourtListener →