This ruling could have far reaching and unintended consequences. It will be interesting to watch this play out.
I hope everyone has a compelling weekend be it planned or spontaneous. M
Roommates.com can be sued for violating fair housing laws, court rules
The website requires users to provide information, including their race and sexual orientation, which could foster housing discrimination.
The law may temper the freewheeling nature of the Internet after all.
The
9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided Thursday that a website may
be found liable for violating fair housing laws by matching roommates
according to gender, sexual orientation and parenthood.
Federal
law protecting websites “was not meant to create a lawless, no-man’s
land on the Internet,” the court in San Francisco said in an 8-3
ruling.
The judges said a site called Roommates.com may be brought to trial for
possibly violating anti-discrimination laws because it requires users
to provide information about gender, sexual orientation and whether
they have children, and then uses the information to screen people for
matches. [L.A. Times Article]
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0 Responses
This is just ridiculous. Should people not have a say in who they live and share a home with? What’s crazy is that this makes a worse experience for people looking for a roommate. What if somebody feels it’s wrong to live with the opposite sex? Does that not matter? What if a 20 year old really doesn’t want to live with a 90 year old? Or vice versa! I’m sorry, but I really couldn’t fault somebody in that situation. This isn’t a neighbor you may or may not ever see – this is somebody you fight over the remote with, you potentially share a bathroom, and in general want to feel comfortable around. I generally don’t agree with how fair housing assumes guilt, and this is way above and beyond even that.