Roommates.com can be sued

If anyone has ever searched for a roommate, you know how bad the process can be. I have often turned to Web sites like Craigslist and Roomates.com to help me find someone. I was always concerned, though, about ads that advertised things like "Christian female roommate wanted" or "Gay roommate wanted."

Looks like my concern was right:

Roommates.com can be sued for violating fair housing laws, court rules
By Maura Dolan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 4, 2008

The law may temper the freewheeling nature of the Internet after all.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided Thursday that a website may be found liable for violating fair housing laws by matching roommates according to gender, sexual orientation and parenthood.

Federal law protecting websites "was not meant to create a lawless, no-man's land on the Internet," the court in San Francisco said in an 8-3 ruling.

The judges said a site called Roommates.com may be brought to trial for possibly violating anti-discrimination laws because it requires users to provide information about gender, sexual orientation and whether they have children, and then uses the information to screen people for matches.

"A real estate broker may not inquire as to the race of a prospective buyer, and an employer may not inquire as to the religion of a prospective employee," Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote for the majority. "If such questions are unlawful when posed face-to-face by telephone, they don't magically become lawful when asked electronically online." Read more.