"Salesforce can't dodge child sex trafficking claims, appeals court says", 4 August 2023

A U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday that business software provider Salesforce (CRM.N) must face sex trafficking allegations from an alleged victim who contends Salesforce knew or should have known that its client Backpage.com was engaged in the trafficking of children.

A divided 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals took an expansive view of the law imposing civil liability on those who participate in a child sex trafficking venture. The majority concluded that the plaintiffs – alleged victim G.G., who was trafficked after running away from home when she was 13, and her mother, Deanna Rose – were not required to show that Salesforce was specifically aware of Backpage advertisements that led to G.G.'s victimization but only that the software company knew or should have known that Backpage was earning significant profits from sex traffickers.

Otherwise, wrote Judge David Hamilton in the majority opinion, a company like Salesforce could “simply bury its head in the sand with respect to individual victims” in order to evade responsibility for providing tailored services to the most “egregious” traffickers...

Hamilton and Judge Doris Pryor also found that Salesforce is not shielded by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects online publishers from claims based on third-party content. The trial court, U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood of Chicago, had held otherwise, dismissing G.G.’s suit because Section 230 barred her claims. But the 7th Circuit majority said that Salesforce cannot invoke Section 230 because G.G.’s lawsuit is based on the company’s own alleged conduct, not content posted by others...

“In a sense, Salesforce helped Backpage find more sex-trafficking contractors. Plaintiffs' allegations therefore do not treat Salesforce as a publisher or speaker even if Backpage's publishing played a critical role in causing G.G.'s ultimate injury.”

In a dissenting opinion, Judge Thomas Kirsch agreed with Salesforce’s argument that it cannot be liable to G.G. because she failed to allege its knowledge of her trafficking...

Salesforce’s lawyers at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher did not respond to my query. The company did not respond to a query sent to its investor relations department...

[Salesforce] will still have an opportunity to contest what the appeals court called “the objective truth” of G.G.’s allegations later in the case...