Salesforce Must Face Lawsuit Over Backpage Sex Trafficking (1)

Aug. 3, 2023, 9:36 PM UTCUpdated: Aug. 3, 2023, 10:08 PM UTC

A victim of sex trafficking and her mother convinced a federal appeals court to revive a lawsuit accusing Salesforce.com Inc. of violating anti-sex trafficking laws through its contracts with the now-defunct classified ads website Backpage.com.

The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on Thursday said the plaintiffs plausibly alleged Salesforce’s participatory liability for Backpage’s use for sex-trafficking. According to the complaint, by 2008 the federal government had identified Backpage as one of the largest sex trafficking websites in the country. In the years after, the site received widespread media attention about its connections to child sex-trafficking.

Salesforce allegedly ...

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