LOS ANGELES—In 2019, a group of 50 women who said they had been sex trafficked through the classified ad site Backpage — which was seized and shut down by federal agents the previous year — sued not only the defunct ad site, but also Salesforce, the company that provides business software infrastructure to dozens of sites, including prior to the site’s shutdown, Backpage.
But a Superior Court Judge in San Francisco blocked the lawsuit, ruling that Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act shielded Saleforce from any liability in the alleged sex trafficking of the plaintiffs, who are identified in the suit only as “Jane Does.”
Section 230 protects online platforms from civil or criminal responsibility for the posts and actions of users. In 2019, attorney Annie McAdams, who represents the women, claimed that Section 230 did not apply to the lawsuit, because the suit did not allege that Salesforce acted as a “publisher.” Instead, she said, “We are making allegations that they helped build Backpage. We are saying that without Salesforce, Backpage wouldn’t have been able to operate.”
On Wednesday of this week, a federal judge in Houston, Texas, agreed with McAdams, allowing the sex trafficking suit against Salesforce to go ahead after all, according to a report by The Houston Chronicle newspaper. Judge Andrew Hanen, a 2002 appointee of President George W. Bush, ruled that the 25-year-old law did not apply to Salesforce’s liability for the alleged sex trafficking through Backpage.
“The sex trafficking victims are closer to making these companies answer for their actions,” McAdams said in a statement Wednesday. “For the first time, a court essentially has said, 'Not so fast, technology industry.’ The Communications Decency Act should not be used to hide devastating evidence of sex trafficking activity and abuse.”
But Hanen dismissed claims made by the plaintiffs of negligence and conspiracy in the alleged sex trafficking.
The lawsuit filed in 2019 alleged that Salesforce was an integral part of the Backpage operation through which the 50 anonymous women say they were trafficked. “Salesforce boasted about fighting human trafficking using its data tools. But behind closed doors, Salesforce’s data tools were actually providing the backbone of Backpage’s exponential growth,” the suit states. “With Salesforce’s guidance, Backpage was able to use Salesforce’s tools to market to new ‘users’ — that is, pimps, johns, and traffickers — on three continents.”
Seven Backpage executives, including the site’s co-founders Michael Lacey and James Larkin, were hit with numerous counts that included money laundering and “facilitating prosecution.” The indictments do not accuse the Backpage execs of sex traffcking directly, however. In December of 2018, the company's CEO, Carl Ferrer, pleaded guilty to money laundering and conspiracy charges.
Photo by nathanmac87 / Wikimedia Commons
