• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, July 2, 2009

An appellate court in California has dismissed four lawsuits against MySpace filed by teen girls who were assaulted by men they met through the site.

The court ruled that MySpace is immune from liability under the Communications Decency Act, which protects Web sites from lawsuits when people use the sites to facilitate crime. The decision upholds an earlier dismissal ruling by a Los Angeles trial court.

This week's decision is also in line with a host of other rulings from around the country. Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Schell in the eastern district of Texas ruled that the federal Communications Decency Act immunizes the site from lawsuits stemming from sex assaults by users. And last year, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reached the same conclusion.

The California cases date back to 2006, when the four teens, ranging in age from 13 to 15, each met adult men through MySpace. The teens all said they were sexually assaulted and filed separate lawsuits against the company. In the lawsuits, brought in Los Angeles County Superior Court, the plaintiffs alleged that MySpace was negligent for failing to deploy reasonable security measures.

But the court found that the teens' real complaint stemmed from content created by other members. "At its core, appellants want MySpace to regulate what appears on its Web site," the court wrote. And, the court said, the Communications Decency Act means that MySpace isn't obligated to police the content on its site.