The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), Pub. L. 104–132 (text)(PDF), 110 Stat. 1214, enacted April 24, 1996, was introduced to the United States Congress in April 1995 as a Senate Bill. The bill was passed with broad bipartisan support by Congress in response to the bombings of the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City. It was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
The United States courts of appeals are the intermediate appellate courts of the United States federal judiciary. The courts of appeals are divided into 13 "Circuits". Eleven of the circuits are numbered "First" through "Eleventh" and cover geographic areas of the United States and hear appeals from the U.S. district courts within their borders. The District of Columbia Circuit covers only Washington, DC. The Federal Circuit hears appeals from federal courts across the United States in cases involving certain specialized areas of law. The courts of appeals also hear appeals from some administrative agency decisions and rulemaking, with by far the largest share of these cases heard by the D.C. Circuit. Appeals from decisions of the courts of appeals can be taken to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co., 23 Media L. Rep. 1794, is a 1995 decision of the New York Supreme Court holding that online service providers can be liable for the speech of their users. The ruling caused controversy among early supporters of the Internet, including some lawmakers, leading to the passage of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in 1996.
The Alien Tort Statute, also called the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), is a section in the United States Code that gives federal courts jurisdiction over lawsuits filed by foreign nationals for torts committed in violation of international law. It was first introduced by the Judiciary Act of 1789 and is one of the oldest federal laws still in effect in the U.S.
The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA) is a United States law, codified at Title 28, §§ 1330, 1332, 1391(f), 1441(d), and 1602–1611 of the United States Code, that established criteria as to whether a foreign sovereign nation is immune from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts—federal or state. The Act also establishes specific procedures for service of process, attachment of property and execution of judgment in proceedings against a foreign state. The FSIA provides the exclusive basis and means to bring a civil suit against a foreign sovereign in the United States. It was signed into law by United States President Gerald Ford on October 21, 1976.
United States v. X-Citement Video, Inc., 513 U.S. 64 (1994), was a federal criminal prosecution filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles against X-Citement Video and its owner, Rubin Gottesman, on three charges of trafficking in child pornography, specifically videos featuring the underaged Traci Lords. In 1989, a federal judge found Gottesman guilty and later sentenced him to one year in jail and a $100,000 fine.
Barrett v. Rosenthal, 40 Cal.4th 33 (2006), was a California Supreme Court case concerning online defamation. The case resolved a defamation claim brought by Stephen Barrett, Terry Polevoy, and attorney Christopher Grell against Ilena Rosenthal and several others. Barrett and others alleged that the defendants had republished libelous information about them on the internet. In a unanimous decision, the court held that Rosenthal was a "user of interactive computer services" and therefore immune from liability under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Section 230 is a section of Title 47 of the United States Code that was enacted as part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which is Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and generally provides immunity for online computer services with respect to third-party content generated by its users. At its core, Section 230(c)(1) provides immunity from liability for providers and users of an "interactive computer service" who publish information provided by third-party users:
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.
Mary Helen Murguia is an American lawyer and jurist serving as Chief United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Her chambers are located in Phoenix, Arizona. She previously served as a U.S. district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Arizona from 2000 to 2011.
Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com, LLC, 521 F.3d 1157, is a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, sitting en banc, held that immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) did not apply to an interactive online operator whose questionnaire violated the Fair Housing Act. However, the court found that Roommates.com was immune under Section 230 of the CDA for the “additional comments” portion of the website. This case was the first to place a limit on the broad immunity that Section 230(c) gives to service providers that has been established under Zeran v. AOL (1997).
The Supreme Court of the United States handed down eight per curiam opinions during its 2014 term, which began October 6, 2014 and concluded October 4, 2015.
Jane Doe No. 14 v. Internet Brands, Inc., 767 F.3d 894 (2014), is a 2014 ruling at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on the legal liability of an Internet service provider for criminal offenses committed by its users. The ultimate ruling in the case has caused confusion over the amount of liability faced by service providers during such incidents.
Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump, 928 F.3d 226 (2019), is a case at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on the use of social media as a public forum. The plaintiffs, Philip N. Cohen, Eugene Gu, Holly Figueroa O'Reilly, Nicholas Pappas, Joseph M. Papp, Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza, and Brandon Neely, are a group of Twitter users blocked by U.S. President Donald Trump's personal @realDonaldTrump account. They alleged that Twitter constitutes a public forum, and that a government official blocking access to that forum is a violation of the First Amendment. The lawsuit also named as defendants White House press secretary Sean Spicer and social media director Dan Scavino.
Lorenzo v. Securities and Exchange Commission, 587 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case from the October 2018 term.
Opati v. Republic of Sudan, 590 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act with its 2008 amendments, whether plaintiffs in federal lawsuits against foreign countries may seek punitive damages for cause of actions prior to enactment of the amended law, with the specific case dealing with victims and their families from the 1998 United States embassy bombings. The Court ruled unanimously in May 2020 that punitive damages can be sought from foreign nations in such cases for preenactment conduct.
An Act Relating to censorship of or certain other interference with digital expression, including expression on social media platforms or through electronic mail messages, also known as Texas House Bill 20 (HB20), is a Texas anti-deplatforming law enacted on September 9, 2021.
Moody v. NetChoice, LLC and NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton are pending United States Supreme Court cases related to protected speech under the First Amendment, content moderation by interactive service providers on the Internet under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and two state laws passed in Florida and Texas that sought to limit this moderation. Both cases are challenges to state laws restricting content moderation on social media websites. The cases are expected to be heard during the Court's 2023–24 term.
Gonzalez v. Google LLC, 598 U.S. 617 (2023), was a case at the Supreme Court of the United States which dealt with the question of whether or not recommender systems are covered by liability exemptions under section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, which was established by section 509 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, for Internet service providers (ISPs) in dealing with terrorism-related content posted by users and hosted on their servers. The case was granted certiorari alongside another Section 230 and terrorism-related case, Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh.
Force v. Facebook, Inc., 934 F.3d 53 was a 2019 decision by the US Second Circuit Appeals Court holding that Section 230 bars civil terrorism claims against social media companies and internet service providers, the first federal appellate court to do so.
Malwarebytes, Inc. v. Enigma Software Group USA, LLC was a 2020 United States federal court case concerning the legal immunity given to internet companies under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. It was denied certiorari to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, but Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States made a statement respecting the denial of certiorari. He opined that section 230 had been interpreted too broadly, and could be narrowed or eliminated in a future case, which he urged his colleagues to hear.
Courts have…departed from the most natural reading of the text by giving Internet companies immunity for their own content ... Section 230(c)(1) protects a company from publisher liability only when content is 'provided by another information content provider.' Nowhere does this provision protect a company that is itself the information content provider.
