• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, December 19, 2016

Lawyers for a group of teen sex-trafficking victims are making a final push to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on whether classifieds company Backpage can be sued for allegedly enabling crime.

The teens are trying to revive their 2014 lawsuit accusing the company of encouraging sex trafficking through the design of its Web site. The teens, who said that pimps posted ads about them in Backpage's escort section, argued that the company created an online marketplace "devoted to facilitating the sale of children for sex."

A trial judge in Boston dismissed the case, ruling that Backpage was protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which immunizes Web platforms from liability for users' activity.

A three-judge panel of the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling earlier this year. "Congress did not sound an uncertain trumpet when it enacted the CDA, and it chose to grant broad protections to internet publishers," the appellate judges wrote in a unanimous decision.

After Backpage prevailed in that court, lawyers for the teens asked the Supreme Court to hear the case. Earlier this month, Backpage opposed that request, arguing in court papers that the earlier decisions are in line with numerous other rulings that dismissed cases against Web platforms.

Last week, counsel for the teens fired back against Backpage, arguing that the company's interpretation of the Communications Decency Act is too sweeping.

"Broad immunity from liability for criminal conduct is a rarity in our law, especially for private entities," they say in new court papers. "It was error for the court of appeals to confer such immunity on ISPs."

When the case was pending in front of the trial judge, Backpage drew the support of digital rights advocates including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Center for Democracy & Technology. Those organizations argued that Web sites would lose their ability to serve as a forum for unfiltered speech if operators had to police the sites for crimes.

“If online service providers were required to engage in protracted and expensive litigation whenever plaintiffs alleged that they were harmed by user-generated content hosted or transmitted by intermediaries, these online platforms for users’ speech would inevitably become more expensive, more restrictive, and ultimately less available for individual expression,” the groups said in a friend-of-the-court brief filed with the trial judge.

But lawyers for the teens are dismissive of that argument. "Establishing clear boundaries between claims that would hold ISPs liable merely for hosting others’ content and claims that hold ISPs liable for their own criminal actions would protect rather than inhibit, lawful commerce and innovation on the internet," they write.

The U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled on whether Section 230 immunizes Web companies when users post unlawful material. But courts have sided with numerous other Web companies -- including AOL, Craigslist, MySpace, Google and Facebook -- on that issue.