It won’t survive appeal.
They don’t even use the words “Ninth Circuit” anymore.
A dangerous ruling.
So if you want a pretty girl for a roommate, you can’t complain if they give you a whip-wielding transvestite instead?
Or if three college girls want a fourth girl, they’re not allowed to say so?
horse manure
Am I confused? I can advertise for a roommate, but I can’t specify that it needs to be a woman? Bet I can mention non-smoking! LOL
Liberals are so concerned with an individuals right to choose1
Precedence or Penumbra? /sarcasm
The choice of a roommate is not the same as the choice of a renter or purchaser. The gov’t cannot limit the right to choose who you live with.
I thought the first ammendment guranteed a right to freely associate. This right to associate implies a converse right to “dis-associate” or associate with folks “other than” those who are not of like mind etc...
If one case, just one case were argued from this point of view, maybe these “Fair Housing, everybody MUST mingle” Nazis would get their a$$es kicked.
Is this really the same thing? It doesn't seem to be about owners/landlords denying the rental based on personal preferences; it's about a tenant already paying rent advertising for a roomate to share the bills. I can't see how that counts towards fair housing in the same vein as an owner renting the property in the first place.
With that aside, I can see how this ruling becomes extended to cover posted comments on other websites, such as Free Republic. If this stands, I bet someone will use the precedent to force the owners of Free Republic to be responsible for all posts by anyone on this site. Then you'd really have a problem with mischievous dissenters signing up to intentionally post "wrongful content" as a prelude to attacking the site legally.
-PJ
What’s idiotic about this ruling is that the preferences are really a service to potential homehunters who would never be seriously considered for the spot. Now they have to search and waste time chasing down and/or interviewing people who will reject them. (Of course, if they hide their preferences until later—say after they are accepted or even move in—and then are asked to leave, there’s probably a lawsuit waiting to happen.)
This site set up a questionnaire that shaped the posted content. Posters were required to choose between options generated by the site. Those options went into the post, and therefore the site was partially responsible for the content.
Since the site was partially responsible for content, it is no longer covered under the safe harbor provisions. Note that the court ruled that any potentially law-violating content in the free-form submission part of the site is still covered by safe harbor (although one idiot judge dissented on that).
So it’s against the law to specify the kind of person you would like to have as your own roommate? And liberals claim to be AGAINST intrusive, in-your-bedroom government? What a bunch of frauds liberals are.
They that "unlawful information" is being exchanged or transmitted.
What percisely is the "unlawful information"?
Information that a particular individual is interested in finding a roommate of a particular race, religion, or any other preference?
Those individuals have ever right to have those preferences.
If other individuals voluntarily provide such information so that they can find a roommate, the US government has no business interfering with them.
I would even expect that gay rights activists would consider this to be governmental discrimination against them, though homosexuality isn't a Constitutionally protected right, so that argument isn't particularly sound.