The US Supreme Court declined Tuesday to hear a case alleging that social media platform Reddit wrongly hosted sexually explicit images and videos of underage individuals, amounting to child pornography. As a result, a ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which dismissed the victims’ claim, will stand.
The case, Jane Does No. 1-6, et al. v. Reddit, Inc., asked the court to consider whether 47 USC § 230(e)(5)(A) shielded Reddit from liability for hosting child pornography on its platform. The court previously refused to reexamine the statute, commonly referred to as Section 230, in a decision handed down earlier this month.
Because the court refused to hear the case, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s decision to dismiss the case remains in effect.
The court heard the Jane Does’ appeal in August 2022. In the case, the Jane Does claimed that Reddit users “posted and circulated sexually explicit images and videos of minors online.” The Jane Does attempted to hold Reddit liable under a federal civil sex trafficking statute, specifically, 18 USC § 1595. They claimed that Reddit benefited from hosting the child pornography due to the amount of site traffic and subsequent advertising revenue it garnered. However, Reddit moved to dismiss the case, citing Section § 230’s liability shield for computer service providers.
Both the district court and the US Court of Appeals found in favor of Reddit, and the case was dismissed. They found that Reddit could not be held responsible for content posted to the platform by its users—even child pornography—because Reddit, itself, did not traffic in the illegal material.
Court watchers previously believed the US Supreme Court would take up the issue of Section 230 in two related cases from earlier this year, Twitter v. Taamneh and Gonzalez v. Google, LLC. But, when the court handed down its opinions on May 18, it had refused to take up the statute. Rather, the court found that both plaintiffs in the cases failed to state a claim for which relief could be granted.
