Roommates.com can be sued for violating fair housing laws, court rules

A roommate-matching website can be held liable for violating fair housing laws by requiring users to state preferences that could be used to discriminate against others because they are gay or straight, male or female or have children, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held today.

The ruling by 12 judges of the San Francisco-based court said that Roommates.com, a website that helps people nationwide seek housing, could be sued for violating federal housing law by requiring users to provide information that people would be barred from seeking in person or on the telephone.

Chief Judge Alex Kozinkski, writing for the majority, said websites that merely post unsolicited information provided by users are not liable for its content. But when a site asks users to provide information that could foster housing discrimination, it may have violated the law, the court said.

“A real estate broker may not inquire as to the race of a prospective buyer, and an employer may not inquire as to the religion of a prospective employee,” Kozinski wrote for the majority. “If such questions are unlawful when posed face-to-face or by telephone, they don’t magically become lawful when asked electronically online.”

The ruling limited protection under the Communications Decency Act, which Kozinski said “was not meant to create a lawless no-man’s-land on the Internet.”

The court found that Roommates.com required users to answer discriminatory questions as a condition of using the site

“This is no different from a real estate broker in real life saying, ‘Tell me whether you’re Jewish or you can find yourself another broker,’ ” Kozinksi wrote.

“If an individual uses an ordinary search engine to query for a “white roommate,” the search engine has not contributed to any alleged unlawfulness in the individual’s conduct,” Kozinski wrote.

Rather, it has provided “neutral tools,” even if they were used to carry out an unlawful search, Kozinksi said.

The court said dating websites would not be liable as long as they did not require discriminatory information.

“A dating website that requires users to enter their sex, race, religion and marital status through drop-down menus, and that provides means for users to search along the same lines, retains its … immunity insofar as it does not contribute to any alleged illegality,” the court majority said.

In a dissent, Judge M. Margaret McKeown complained the ruling could undermine the growth of the Internet.

“The majority’s unprecedented expansion of liability for Internet service providers threatens to chill the robust development of the Internet that Congress envisioned,” McKeown wrote.

maura.dolan@latimes.com