The U.S. Supreme Court has handed a victory to Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) by refusing to clear a path for victims of attacks by militant organizations to hold social media companies liable under an anti-terrorism law. The court also sidestepped a bid to weaken legal protections for internet firms in a separate case involving Google LLC.
The justices reversed a lower court’s ruling that had revived a lawsuit against Twitter by the American relatives of Nawras Alassaf, a Jordanian man killed in a 2017 attack during New Year’s celebration in a Istanbul nightclub claimed by the Islamic State militant group.
The case was one of two that the Supreme Court weighed in its current term aimed at holding internet companies accountable for contentious content posted by users – an issue of growing concern for the public and U.S. lawmakers.
The justices on Thursday, in a similar case against Google LLC-owned YouTube, part of Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc, sidestepped making a ruling on a bid to narrow a federal law protecting internet companies from lawsuits for content posted by their users – called Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
The court ruled that the plaintiffs had failed to sufficiently allege that Twitter had knowingly provided “substantial assistance” to an “act of international terrorism” that would allow the relatives to maintain their suit and seek damages under the anti-terrorism law.
In the case against Google, the justices wrote that they “decline to address the application of (Section 230) to a complaint that appears to state little, if any, plausible claim for relief.”
The rulings are a victory for internet companies, which have argued that allowing lawsuits like this would threaten them with liability for providing widely available services to billions of users.