• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, January 9, 2017

In a victory for Backpage, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to revive a lawsuit claiming that the company facilitated sex trafficking.

The court didn't give a reason for its decision.

The move brings an end to a lawsuit filed two years ago on behalf of teen victims who argued that Backpage enabled sex trafficking through the design of its online classifieds site.

A federal trial judge in Boston threw out the case, ruling that the Communications Decency Act immunizes Backpage from liability for users' crimes. Last year, the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling. That court said in a sweeping opinion that the Communications Decency Act protects Web publishers regardless of their business models.

"Congress did not sound an uncertain trumpet when it enacted the CDA, and it chose to grant broad protections to internet publishers," the appeals judges wrote. "Showing that a website operates through a meretricious business model is not enough to strip away those protections."

The ruling followed a long line of similar decisions stretching back to 1997, when the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals said AOL wasn't liable for defamatory statements posted to its message boards. Numerous tech companies -- including Craigslist, MySpace, Google and Facebook -- have since prevailed in lawsuits by people who sought to hold the sites responsible for crimes or other activity by users.

As recently as last year, Twitter defeated a lawsuit brought by the families of people killed in a terrorist attack in Amman, Jordan. The families alleged in that case that Twitter enabled the growth of ISIS. Despite the pro-Twitter decision, families of three victims killed in last year's attack at the Pulse club in Orlando just sued Facebook, Twitter and Google for allegedly facilitating ISIS's growth.

It's worth noting that not all rulings have favored Web sites. In 2008, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to dismiss a lawsuit accusing Roommates.com of offering discriminatory housing ads. The court said in that case that Roommates may potentially be liable if it helped "develop" illegal ads. (Roommates.com ultimately prevailed in that matter.)

And the Washington state Supreme Court previously refused to dismiss a lawsuit by sex trafficking victims against Backpage at a preliminary stage. The judges in that case said there were factual questions about whether Backpage "developed" prostitution ads.

But the Supreme Court's pro-Backpage move today is likely to give Web publishers a boost in future disputes, according to Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman.

"The 1st Circuit ruling was a very powerful defense win," says Goldman, who joined in a 2015 friend-of-the-court brief siding with Backpage. "Now that the 1st Circuit opinion is the final word in that case, it will grow in importance."