Amicus Briefs

Determined if the First Amendment justifies a commercial business’s refusal to serve a customer in a protected group.

Congress enacted the Communications Decency Act (“CDA”) for the primary purpose of preventing children from viewing indecent or otherwise harmful material online. The legislators emphasized that its goal was “to help encourage the private sector to protect our children from being exposed to obscene and indecent material on the Internet” by removing liability for Internet companies that “make a good faith effort to edit the smut from their systems.” The First Circuit Court of Appeals—like several other courts—interpreted the law as providing complete immunity to websites that solicit and profit from illegal content so long as the legal claims against them bear some relationship to online content provided by a third party. Because Backpage’s “adult” services section contains advertisements written by paid users, the First Circuit held that the site was protected from liability for aiding the Petitioners’ sexual exploitation as minors, even though the Petitioners persuasively alleged that Backpage took an active role in shaping the content of the ads and deliberately tailored its website to “make sex trafficking easier.” This sweeping interpretation  is not what Congress intended when it enacted legislation seeking to encourage website operators to behave responsibly.

Determined whether non-profit organizations that have religious objections to contraception have the right to exclude coverage of contraception in their group health insurance plans.

Individuals and the EEOC are seeking justice for dozens of immigrant women and men subjected to abuse in their workplace, including sexual assault, extortion, felonious assault, and sexual harassment.  This specific appeal seeks to enforce the confidentiality protections available under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) for individuals who apply for U-visas and T-visas, which are available to crime victims who cooperate with authorities and for immigrant family violence victims who apply for immigration relief under VAWA.

The issue of confidentiality of VAWA self-petitions, U-visa, and T-visa applications has been litigated in the lower courts, but this appeal is the first time that a federal appeals court has heard the issue.  By submitting this brief, we hope to strengthen the Violence Against Women Act by ensuring that immigrant victims of sexual assault, harassment, and other crimes receive the full protections available to them under the law.