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The Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law filed suit in federal court Monday, charging that the posts on the popular Internet site violate federal fair-housing rules, which forbid excluding possible tenants on the basis of race, gender, family status, religion or other protected categories.
Attorney Stephen Libowsky, who's handling the case for the civil rights group, said that Craigslist provided a good service but should be held to the same standards that newspapers and other publications have met over the past few decades.
"We've had decades of gains since civil rights legislation was passed," Libowsky said. "We're concerned that hard-fought gains that we've made would be lost, just because we now read on a computer screen what we used to read in a newspaper."
The case taps into what has been a controversial legal question since the early days of the Internet but that has almost always been decided in favor of Internet companies.
Unlike newspapers or magazines, Internet sites are often made up of content submitted wholly by visitors or readers, without any intervention by an editor. Courts and Congress have typically said that means the sites are shielded from traditional libel or copyright infringement liability, if they remove offending posts when notified.
In the broadest legal statement on the issue, Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act says in part that "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."
The Chicago public interest group said that it had found more than 200 instances of discriminatory language on Craigslist's Chicago site, with language such as "no minorities" or "Ladies please rent from me."
Libowsky said the group is not looking for a specific result but wanted either a human or automated editor to be able to filter these postings out.
Craigslist does notify users on every housing listing page that discriminatory posts are illegal under federal law, and it asks readers to contact the site if they see offending posts.
Craigslist Chief Executive Officer Jim Buckmaster said in an e-mail that the company was "committed to fair housing for everyone," and did more than was legally required to educate its users about fair housing law, and to give readers tools to identify and remove discriminatory ads.
"We'll try to make lemonade out of this lemon, by transforming the time and money that will now be diverted from serving our users into setting a positive legal precedent for society at large," Buckmaster said.
See more CNET content tagged:
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Internet-site
That means a Pastor must rent to a Satanist?
This is a very very stupid law.
A renter has every right to screen users out and Human resources do it all the time.
Sorry someone with better qualifications filled the job we with you luck in your endevours.
Renters have every right to deny illegal aliens.
out of the court system. There is no federal/constitutional issue
at stake, and Craigslist is not a federal or state run institution.
Granted the parties are from different states, but unless they are
suing for over $75,000 in damages, the courts would have no
jurisdiction under federal law or the long arms statute.
- Rusty Rothwell
A dude is an African-America citizen of the US with a job that pays around $50,000 a year, has a FICO score of 730 (excellent credit) and no criminal record. So is he, as a minority not allowed to rent or buy where he chooses? Is it OK to advertise a house or rental that says he need not apply solely and simply because he is African American?
I don't think so and I think this is why we have the Fair Housing Act.
"Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (Fair Housing Act), as amended, prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of dwellings, and in other housing-related transactions, based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status (including children under the age of 18 living with parents of legal custodians, pregnant women, and people securing custody of children under the age of 18), and handicap (disability)."
Caucasians are still the majority (at least 225 million strong):
"Nationally, the country's white population increased 7.3 percent between 1990 and 1999 to 224.6 million"
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/08/30/minority.population/
Sorry I ruined your paranoid delusions.
than attorneys. No matter what one thinks of racists -- and I
happen to think they are moral sludge -- the right to property
should allow one to rent to whomever one pleases, just as it allows
a renter to refuse to rent from a landlord he dislikes. If we have a
level playing field, why do we allow tenants to discriminate in
choosing from whom to rent?
At no point did anyone say that a landlord has to take anyone who shows up at their door. Anti-discrimination rules say that if a person is fully qualified by all the criteria that you set out, you may not reject them on the basis of social reasons.
Dont waste other people about something that isnt broke or trying to convince people that Craigslist is doing anything wrong.
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme/?entry=craigslist_meme
Bad news about Craigslist was predictable enough that I generated this graph and commentary together in December in expectation.
They certainly can be subject to a cause of action for defamation. That's why they have lawyers to advise them regarding content and policy.
"Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (Fair Housing Act), as amended, prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of dwellings, and in other housing-related transactions, based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status (including children under the age of 18 living with parents of legal custodians, pregnant women, and people securing custody of children under the age of 18), and handicap (disability)."