Citing vague language in the law, a publisher’s First Amendment protection over what a third-party might post in their ad, even a state law that was leveled at Backpage that itself violated the First Amendment’s scienter requirement (scienter just a fancy legal word for knowledge of wrongdoing) mostly what judges rule is that Backpage had no specific knowledge of the age of the person featured in adds they ran nor were they responsible for their content.
Surely a murky area, seeing as ignorance of the law can never be used as a way to circumvent it, and ‘responsibility’ often falls into a grey area, still Backpage has seen plenty of laws suits against them dismissed.
Sex trafficking?
Arguably it’s been the question of whether Backage was aiding and abetting sex trafficking that carried the heaviest sting to the many suits brought against the company, and across public perception of wrongdoing. But time and again judges have found that Backpage is not responsible in the way lawmakers and even private individuals (and a few have brought suit against Backpage) claim Backpage should be when it comes to this highly emotive issue.
Sex trafficking is just simply very difficult to level against third parties.
They haven’t made Harris happy
And as we have reported here, Kamala Harris went after Backpage when she was the AG in San Francisco. Stating in a press conference at the time that the site was “the world’s top online brothel,” her prosecution saw mixed results.
