"Lawsuits over Facebook allowing pimps to recruit online may go forward, Texas appeals court says", 29 Apr 2020

A Texas appeals court has rejected Facebook’s efforts to halt multiple lawsuits accusing the social media juggernaut of knowingly permitting sex traffickers to recruit through its various platforms.

The lawsuits were brought by three Houston women recruited as 13-,14- and 16-year-olds through Facebook apps. The social media company appealed the rulings to the 14th Court of Appeal...

...Annie McAdams, the lawyer who sued on the young women’s behalf, said she expects Facebook will seek to halt the cases by appealing the lower courts’ finding to the state supreme court....

...The trio of Houston lawsuits make the case that Facebook and its various apps and commodities should not be protected by blanket legal immunity and that Houston is the right place to proceed, even if Facebook is based in Silicon Valley...

...The ruling came from civil judges in October. The appeals court agreed with plaintiffs in separate rulings that Facebook was not immune...

...Facebook argued that it was protected from answering lawsuits because the tech company had immunity under the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law written to address defamation cases against technology cases during the dial-up era.

...Following the trial court proceeding, attorney McAdams explained,“The CDA was never designed to protect entities that protect the rape of children.”