Supreme Court won’t hear lawsuit claiming X profited from sexually abusive content
The U.S. Supreme Court will not hear arguments in a lawsuit against X, formerly known as Twitter, by two individuals who claim the social media platform was responsible for their sexual exploitation.
In an orders list released Monday, the Supreme Court denied certiorari without comment in the case of John Doe et al. v. X Corp., allowing a lower court ruling in favor of X to stand.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), which is helping represent the two anonymous plaintiffs, expressed disappointment with the high court’s decision declining the appeal.
“Does our country really allow corporations to commit federal crimes, like knowingly distributing child sexual abuse material, without consequences?” said Dani Pinter, chief legal officer at NCOSE, in a statement.
“If this can happen to our clients without accountability, every parent and every American should be asking what protections children truly have online today.”
Pinter urged Congress to “sunset” Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives technology companies immunity from civil liability for content posted to their platforms by third parties.
“Section 230 continues to stand in the way of justice for victims of sexual abuse and exploitation, despite the fact that tech platforms have knowingly facilitated these abuses,” Pinter continued. “No company, online or otherwise, should be above the law.”
“For our clients, this is not the end of the road. We are still moving forward in our lawsuit against Twitter on products liability claims and claims that it failed to report child sexual abuse material on its platform.”
While they were in their early teens, John Doe No. 1 and John Doe No. 2 were tricked into sending nude images of themselves to an adult and then blackmailed into engaging in sexual acts.
In 2020, the child sexual abuse material resulting from the exploitation was posted on X, then known as Twitter, where it was widely shared and liked. When the victims tried to get Twitter to remove the content, they were told the posts did not violate community standards.
Although the social media platform eventually removed the videos after a Department of Homeland Security official intervened, Twitter allowed the account that posted the videos to remain active for at least another year.
In response, the two John Does filed a complaint against X Corp., alleging in part that the social media company illegally profited from their sexual exploitation.
Last August, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that X was immune from liability regarding claims that the platform knowingly benefited from sexually exploitative material.
The panel ruling, authored by Circuit Judge Danielle J. Forrest, a Trump appointee, nevertheless concluded that X was likely liable for claims of negligence and “defective reporting-infrastructure design” and sent the case back to the lower court.
