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In a very controversial decision, the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Roommates.com has violated the fair housing laws by matching roommates by gender, sexual orientation, and parenthood. By asking prospective roommates to put in their status on these criteria and allowing prospective roommates to judge them on that basis.

Now lets think this through, the 9^th Circuit has said that you will not be able to pre screen prospective roommates. It is one thing to not allow you to pre screen people to live in a property or neighborhood. That is fair and logical.

But the criteria must be much tighter when someone shares a key with you and has immediate access to you and your family. The relationship between people living in a community or apartment complex is completely different than one who lives under the same roof is much different. 

 hope that Roommates.com has the ability to take this decision  to the next level as 5 other appeals courts have ruled against such laws already. A precedent such as this opens many doors to the law of unintended consequences that could severely impede many of the  benefits that the internet offers  consumers.

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.”

The ruling dealt a major blow to the immunity shield that federal law has provided to nurture Internet expansion. Lawyers in the case said the trend in federal courts had been to protect websites from liability.

The three judges who dissented called the ruling an “unprecedented expansion of liability” that could chill the Internet’s growth. They said the decision was at odds with rulings by five other federal appeals courts and threatened protections for all interactive sites. via Los Angeles Times.

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