Meddlers eye online freedom

Craigslist targeted by suit

Published February 19, 2006 at midnight

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Craigslist, an online ad service that is used by more 10 million people a month, has been sued by a bunch of busybody lawyers in Chicago because some people who put up ads for places to rent or sell don't understand the wildly overreaching interpretation of federal laws against housing discrimination.

The self-styled Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law says the lawsuit is necessary because discriminatory ads are more common on craigslist than in newspapers. Maybe that's true, although the site is careful about informing people about the law and asks readers to cooperate in identifying legally unacceptable ads so they can be removed.

Perhaps in part because of such precautions, such ads appear to be rare. The lawyers' group says on its Web site that it found more than 200 ads that, in its opinion, violate the law. And some of them clearly do, like "no children," "Muslim preferred" and "no minorities."

But Jim Buckmaster, the craigslist CEO, notes on the company's Web site that some 200,000 housing ads were submitted to the Chicago site over a six-month period. And some of the challenged ads would look pretty innocuous to anyone unfamiliar with the heavy-handed enforcement of the fair housing laws.

It's illegal to say anything in ads for property for rent or sale "that indicates any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin."

So ads we found on the Denver craigslist such as "Wanted, One female for 1 Room in 3 Bedroom House (Boulder)" or another looking for "a maintenance man" would probably be unacceptable even though they help people find a good fit.

Sellers and landlords aren't permitted to express preferences, but like it or not, buyers and tenants have them, and often for reasons that aren't remotely discriminatory. Maybe they'd like to know that an advertised apartment is "near St. Gertrude's church" or has "Buddhist temple nearby" - two actual comments that are supposedly out of line. Buckmaster quite reasonably calls such descriptions "incidental and harmless."

And what's wrong with "wants one nice quiet person"? Or "vibrant southwest Hispanic neighborhood offering great classical Mexican culture, restaurants and businesses"? They don't exclude anybody.

Ordinary individuals venturing onto craigslist as advertisers may simply be trying to be helpful in providing information prospective tenants could find useful - the kind of information they think they'd like to have if they were looking for housing.

They have no reason to know the law has been interpreted to mean they can't say a lot of such potentially useful things.

Craigslist deserves to win in court, and it has a good chance to do so. One section of the Communications Decency Act gives legal immunity to Web sites that post information provided by third parties, and a California court ruled in favor of Roommate.com in a somewhat similar case. The site also argues, and we believe correctly, that it has done much more to open up the housing market than to restrict it. If it had to hire people to monitor every ad, it couldn't continue to do that.

If craigslist doesn't win, it presumably would also be subject to even more restrictive local fair-housing ordinances, where prohibitions can even bar mention of political orientation ("progressive seeking like-minded roommate"). As advocates for ordinary consumers, we're cheering craigslist on.

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