Fighting for the Right to Run Sex Ads

Backpage.com’s business is an online classified marketplace, providing a forum for people who want to sell cars, rent an apartment, or find a baby sitter. But the site is far better known as one of the biggest web platforms for sex advertising—the descendant of the raunchy ads that used to be found at the back of alt weeklies such as the Village Voice. As such, Backpage is tied to the ills of that business: prostitution and human trafficking. It’s also become a fierce standard-bearer in the war over online free speech, wrapping its business model in the First Amendment to fend off enemies in law enforcement and government.

Those foes are persistent, and understandably so: It’s easy to support the ideal of free speech but rather more complicated when faced with for-profit companies like Backpage, whose constitutionally protected activities have contributed to horrific harm to minors and women. That’s the backstory to the battle between Backpage and Sheriff Thomas Dart, who’s hoping to take his fight to the U.S. Supreme Court in the term that starts on Oct. 3. To get at Backpage, he’s trying to do an end run around the immunity protecting online businesses from liability for what their users do.