Advocates Disappointed by Ruling on 2018 Anti-Sex Trafficking Law

A 2018 anti-sex trafficking law that weakened liability protections for the tech industry is still a “bad law” that endangers the lives of sex workers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said Friday after an unfavorable decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in docket 1:18-cv-01552 (see 2307070052). "We are disappointed in the court's ruling and discussing options for moving forward with the clients,” said EFF Civil Liberties Director David Greene. The Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) “continues to be a bad law that has forced sex work back on to the streets and otherwise endangered the lives of sex workers and others." said Bob Corn-Revere, an attorney for the Woodhull Freedom Foundation. He said plaintiffs didn’t get the “constitutional ruling we sought, [but] the court narrowed FOSTA's reach by interpreting it narrowly to avoid many of the potential applications we feared.” The court cleaned up after Congress and interpreted FOSTA “narrowly to reach only speech that is integral to criminal conduct,” he said: The court concluded FOSTA doesn’t “reach the intent to engage in general advocacy about prostitution, or to give advice to sex workers generally to protect them from abuse. Nor would it cover the intent to preserve for historical purposes webpages that discuss prostitution."