## Facts

- Roommates.com operated a website matching people seeking roommates with those offering spare rooms.
- Users were required to create profiles before accessing listings.
- The site required users to disclose sex, sexual orientation, and whether children would live with them, and to state roommate preferences on those same characteristics.
- Roommates.com displayed users’ answers in profiles and used them to filter searches and send email matches reflecting stated preferences.
- The site also offered an open-ended “Additional Comments” text box where users could write free-form content, which Roommates.com published without requiring particular topics or answers.
- Fair Housing Councils sued under the federal Fair Housing Act (FHA) and California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), alleging the site’s required questions, preference displays, and discriminatory statements facilitated unlawful housing discrimination.
- The district court granted summary judgment for Roommates.com, holding it was immune under Communications Decency Act (CDA) § 230 for all challenged content.

## Issues

1. Whether CDA § 230(c)(1) immunizes Roommates.com from liability based on user profile content and site functions alleged to violate the FHA/FEHA.
2. Whether Roommates.com became an “information content provider” as to the challenged content by requiring, structuring, and using discriminatory information, thereby losing § 230 immunity under § 230(f)(3).
3. Whether § 230 immunity applies to free-form discriminatory statements posted by users in an open-ended comments field.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit (en banc) affirmed in part and reversed in part the summary judgment on § 230 immunity.
- No § 230 immunity applied to claims targeting the mandatory questionnaire and the site’s matching/filtering based on protected characteristics, because the site helped develop the allegedly unlawful content.
- § 230 immunity applied to claims based solely on users’ free-form “Additional Comments,” because the site did not require or dictate the content of those statements.
- The case was remanded for further proceedings on the statutory-violation questions not resolved by the immunity ruling.

## Legal Principles

- CDA § 230(c)(1) bars treating an online service as the publisher or speaker of information provided by another information content provider, but it does not immunize a service for content it creates or develops.
- A website is an “information content provider” for § 230 purposes when it is responsible, in whole or in part, for creating or developing the information at issue, including by making a material contribution to the alleged unlawfulness.
- Tools that merely allow users to post content may remain protected as “neutral” publication functions; immunity is more likely to be lost where the service requires users to provide unlawful content or uses structured inputs to implement unlawful criteria.
- Providing a blank, open-ended text field and publishing user speech, without requiring specific unlawful inputs, generally falls within § 230 protection for third-party content.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit held that Roommates.com could not claim CDA § 230 immunity for features that required users to provide protected-trait information and used those inputs to channel roommate matches, but it retained immunity for a free-form comments section that merely published user-supplied text.


Fair Hous. Council of S.F. Valley v. Roommates.com, LLC, 521 F.3d 1157 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc)