Antitrust And Section 230: Where Are We After Gonzalez v. Google?

In an unsigned per curiam opinion yesterday in Gonzalez v. Google, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the Ninth Circuit's judgment— which had held that plaintiffs' complaint was barred by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act – and remanded it. But the Court's opinion entirely skirted a highly-anticipated issue: whether Section 230 does, in fact, shelter as much activity as courts have held to date.

This term was the first time the Court seemed to be open to interpreting that statute. In October 2022, it granted certiorari in two related cases exploring the interaction between anti-terrorism laws and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Yesterday, as Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a unanimous decision in the related Twitter v. Taamneh case, "Plaintiffs' allegations are insufficient to establish that these defendants aided and abetted ISIS in carrying out the relevant attack." In its brief opinion in Gonzalez, the Court reiterated that in light