The Supreme Court declined on July 2 to take up the case of a Texas teenager who wanted to revive his unsuccessful lawsuit that accused social media platform Snapchat of failing to protect its young users from sexual predators.
The Supreme Court did not provide reasons for its decision.
The petitioner was not identified by name in court documents because he was a minor when the lawsuit was initiated.
Lower courts threw out the case, finding that Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act barred lawsuits against internet companies for liability for users’ content. The case is John Doe v. Snap Inc.
Snap Inc. does business as Snapchat LLC and Snap LLC.
Justice Clarence Thomas filed a dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch.
Justice Thomas recounted that when the petitioner was 15 years old, “his science teacher groomed him for a sexual relationship.”
The abuse came to light after the petitioner overdosed on prescription drugs that the teacher had supplied.
“The teacher initially seduced Doe by sending him explicit content on Snapchat, a social-media platform built around the feature of ephemeral, self-deleting messages,” the justice wrote.
The petitioner argued that the design of Snapchat encourages minors to misstate their age to access the website and allows “adults to prey upon them through the self-deleting message feature.”
By refusing to take up the case, the Supreme Court “chooses not to address whether social-media platforms—some of the largest and most powerful companies in the world—can be held responsible for their own misconduct,” he wrote.
“The question whether [Section] 230 immunizes platforms for their own conduct warrants the Court’s review,” Justice Thomas wrote.
Case History
A court first ruled on the lawsuit two years ago.On July 7, 2022, Judge Lee H. Rosenthal of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas granted the social media company’s motion to dismiss.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed that ruling on June 26, 2023, finding that the circuit precedent of Doe v. MySpace (2008) required dismissal. That case was about a 13-year-old girl who overstated her age so she could create a personal social media profile that allowed a sexual predator to make contact with her.
The three judges were Patrick Higginbotham, James Graves Jr., and Dana Douglas.
Instead, he aimed to hold the company liable “(1) as a host who negligently designed an environment rife with sexual predators and then lured children in, and (2) as a distributor who knew or should have known, given the technology it uses to screen content for advertisers, that Doe’s teacher was using Snapchat to groom him.”
After the Fifth Circuit initially ruled against the petitioner, seven out of 15 judges voted to rehear the case, falling short of the required majority. This meant the circuit court would not “revisit its faulty precedent” regarding Section 230, the petition stated.
According to the petition, Fifth Circuit precedent grants “broad, atextual immunity to internet platforms from any claim that involves third-party created content.”
The dissenting circuit judges wrote that the Supreme Court should step in and “properly interpret the statutory language enacted by Congress[.]”
“These dissenting voices joined a growing chorus of circuit judges across the county [sic] calling for a reexamination of the proper scope of Section 230,” according to the petition.
Snap Inc. had urged the Supreme Court to reject the petition.
“The petition invites the Court to consider the limits of … [Section] 230, but the facts of this case … place Snap squarely within the heartland of that provision,” the company said.
“Because the statute’s plain text forecloses petitioner’s claims, this case is a poor vehicle for the referendum on section 230 that petitioner and [those filing friend-of-the-court briefs] seek.”
The justices now leave town for their summer recess. The Court will resume hearing cases on the first Monday in October.
