Big Doings in The Texas Courts

Texas Supreme Court Building

There were a couple of big decisions out of the Texas Supreme court the past couple of days.

First up is a case involving Facebook and sex trafficking. The Court ruled that section 320 of the communications decency act did not provide Facebook immunity from being sued by victims of sex trafficking when the abusers use that site.

The majority wrote, “We do not understand Section 230 to ‘create a lawless no-man’s-land on the Internet’ in which states are powerless to impose liability on websites that knowingly or intentionally participate in the evil of online human trafficking. . . Holding internet platforms accountable for the words or actions of their users is one thing, and the federal precedent uniformly dictates that Section 230 does not allow it,” the opinion said. “Holding internet platforms accountable for their own misdeeds is quite another thing. This is particularly the case for human trafficking.”

This ruling allows several civil suits from victims to go forward. Annie McAdams, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, said it was a groundbreaking decision. This is the first case to beat Facebook on its argument that it had immunity under Section 230, she said. “While we have a long road ahead, we are grateful that the Texas Supreme Court will allow these courageous trafficking survivors to have their day in court against Facebook,” McAdams said. She said with the help of an anti-trafficking provision under the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code called Chapter 98, “We believe trafficking survivors in Texas can expose and hold accountable businesses such as Facebook that benefit from these crimes of exploitation.”

The other big case out of Texas is in regards to firearms retailers responsibility in selling firearms that are later used in crimes. The case in question involved Academy Sports and the families of those killed in the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs shooting. The families sued believing the retailer was responsible for the gunman aquiring the weapon used in the shooting. Despite getting a bad conduct discharge from the USAF for spousal abuse, the shooter passed a federally mandated and administered background check.

“Although federal law disqualified Kelley from purchasing a firearm at the time of the sale — based in part on his conviction in a 2012 court-martial for assaulting his wife and stepson and his dishonorable discharge from the United States Air Force — that disqualifying information was not in the system, which authorized Academy to ‘Proceed’ with the sale,” the court found.

This one hits close to home for this editor, as he works in the firearms industry. While we can refuse a sale for any reason, and this Editor has on several occasions, most gun salespeople rely on the results of the NICS background check. In the case out of Texas, the Air Force, who is being sued for it, failed to forward the information that would have disqualified the shooter. Had he presented normally, and not set off any alarm bells, this editor would have allowed the sale to proceed as normal, and barring a delay or deny from NICS, sold the firearm.