WASHINGTON — The Woodhull Freedom Foundation, a prominent civil society organization advocating for free sexual expression and sex workers’ rights, filed an appeal in its lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the highly controversial FOSTA-SESTA carveout to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. 

FOSTA-SESTA was signed into law in by former President Donald Trump in 2018, with the intention of providing leverage to lodge criminal and civil complaints regarding the promotion and facilitation of prostitution on web platforms. Since its passage, critics say the law has chilled expression and discouraged First Amendment-protected and lawful speech about sex-related topics online. 

“FOSTA’s Section 230 exemption sets a dangerous precedent for government censorship of other types of disfavored speech,” argues attorney Lawrence Walters, part of the legal team representing Woodhull in its lawsuit. 

“We are confident in the strength of our appeal, and look forward to the DC Circuit’s de novo review, which will allow it to take a fresh look at the constitutional issues posed by FOSTA,” Walters said in a statement issued by the Woodhull. 

Ricci Joy Levy, the executive director of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, is also still committed to the suit. 

“In the hours after its passage, we saw the dramatic chilling effect FOSTA would have on legally protected speech, as platforms, forums and resources used sex workers and others were taken offline,” Levy said.  “In the years since, through both the data and lived experiences, we’ve seen how FOSTA has endangered the lives of sex workers. With this law, the government has encouraged censorship that is otherwise prohibited by the First Amendment.”

Woodhull is joined in the suit by other non-profit organizations like the Human Rights Watch and Internet Archive.  The group is also represented by Walters, Bob Corn-Revere of the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine and a team of counsel from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Stanford Cyber Law Center.

Woodhull maintains that FOSTA-SESTA violates the First and Fifth Amendments of the United States Constitution. The case, Woodhull Freedom Foundation et al. v. United States is before federal courts in Washington, D.C.

Photo of E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse by AgnosticPreachersKid via Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. (Image has been resized and cropped.)