The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal by Backpage.com, one of the Internet’s largest sex services websites, and the company will now have to reveal to Congress whether it attempts to screen out sex traffickers.
Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer had argued his company was protected by First Amendment press freedoms, and he said he shouldn’t have to turn over internal company documents on sex ads, saying they constituted editorial decisions.
Lower courts rejected that argument and now the Supreme Court has as well.
In a short statement the court lifted a stay Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. had imposed last week, saying Mr. Ferrer must comply with District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer’s decision from earlier this summer.
She’d set a 10-day deadline for Backpage to turn over reams of documents, including emails from employees whose job is to go through classified ads for adult services, including escorts. That deadline has long since passed, and with the Supreme Court’s ruling Tuesday, it kicks in.
Backpage lawyers said Tuesday night they were turning over more than 38,000 pages immediately, but they also filed a request with the judge asking for a delay in the deadline.
The lawyers said complying with Congress’ request that personally identifying data be deleted will take longer. They said they’ve already spent nearly 3,000 hours of work, involving 34 lawyers, to try to process information.
“The volume of documents and data required to be processed, reviewed, redacted and logged renders production of every last responsive document and complete privilege logs by September 13, 2016 impossible regardless of best efforts,” the company’s lawyers said, adding that they hoped the tens of thousands of pages they were producing would be evidence of good faith.
Congressional lawyers indicated they would oppose the request, Backpage said.
Backpage says it does what it can to weed out illegal ads, but it does not have a specific policy for how employees are to do that. Instead, employees make their own judgments, the company told the court — adding that it would be burdensome to have to produce emails from each of them.
After hearing extensive arguments, Judge Collyer ruled against the company, saying it appeared to be trying to hide its activities. She also rejected Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer’s claims that Backpage’s methods of screening ads are editorial decision-making, and protected by the First Amendment.
“The claim of protected ’editorial policies’ rings hollow,” she wrote in an early August ruling.
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is looking into whether Backpage helps contribute to sex trafficking by allowing traffickers to place ads offering their victims for service.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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