Sex ad site sues government to stop crackdown

Backpage.com, the country’s largest online site for prostitution advertising, has sued Attorney General Loretta Lynch to stop her from enforcing a law designed to protect victims of sex trafficking. The lawsuit states the Stop Advertising Victims of Exploitation (SAVE) Act violates the First and Fifth amendments.

Signed by President Barack Obama in May, the SAVE Act prohibits online advertisers from knowingly posting ads for commercial sex acts involving minors or benefitting financially from such ads. Violation of the law carries a minimum sentence of 10 years.

“If the SAVE Act were interpreted to permit criminal liability if a website receives an allegation that a post concerns sex trafficking, this would create a notice-and-takedown regime that would impermissibly chill speech,” the lawsuit states.

Recently, Backpage has been on the legal offensive, depicting itself as a lawful business persecuted by government overreach.

“Members of Congress and others have assailed Backpage.com for many years, despite the website’s extensive efforts to prevent, screen, and block improper ads from users,” the suit said.

Lawmakers, police, and child advocacy groups have long maintained Backpage contributes to the growing problem of domestic minor sex trafficking and is profiting from it as a result. USA Today reported more than 400 cases of child sex trafficking across 47 states have been linked to the website. Witnesses at a Senate hearing last month estimated Backpage earned at least $130 million in 2014 and is projected to take in more than $150 million this year.

“Backpage is actually is the first place that the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children searches when we have a missing child case,” said Yiota Souras, the organization’s general counsel. The center says 71 percent of the child sex trafficking reports it receives involve ads posted on Backpage.

Backpage’s lawyers have maintained the issue is one of free speech. The embroiled website has a near-perfect record of winning in court by citing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” Backpage insists that law grants them complete immunity regarding any content posted by users.

Most judges hearing Backpage lawsuits have agreed. Three states have passed similar laws to SAVE only to see them overturned as unconstitutional. Judges have dismissed most of the cases against Backpage, stating the company was not liable for its customer’s posts, even when notified that a post involved a trafficked victim. Recently, an appeals judge ordered Cook County, Ill., Sheriff Thomas Dart to “cease and desist” his campaign against the website after he wrote a letter to the major credit card companies asking them to block their card’s use on the website. As of this writing, the credit card companies have not resumed business with Backpage.

But some in the legal community say Section 230 of the CDA must be read in context. Mary Anne Franks, a professor at the University of Miami School of Law, said Section 230 expressly states no internet entity has immunity from federal criminal law.

“This means that every internet service provider, search engine, social networking platform and website is subject to thousands of laws, including child pornography laws, obscenity laws, stalking laws and copyright laws,” Franks writes.

In September, three minors sued Backpage on grounds including conspiracy, sexual exploitation of children, and invasion of privacy. Backpage again moved to dismiss, stating they were immune to Washington’s state law claims. This time, however, the courtdeemed it plausible that Backpage intentionally designed its posting rules to induce sex trafficking.