Supreme Court rejects appeal from flight-sharing company
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court won’t hear an appeal from a company that wants to offer flight-sharing services using a model similar to Uber.
The justices on Monday left in place a lower court ruling that said Boston-based Flytenow could not operate a website that connected private pilots with passengers willing to share fuel costs and other flight expenses.
The Federal Aviation Administration shut down the website in 2015 after finding that the service violated flight regulations.
Cost-sharing arrangements have long been allowed through word of mouth, bulletin boards and email. But the FAA said using a website was like advertising and subjected those pilots to the same elaborate safety regulations as commercial airlines.
Flytenow argued that it was applying modern technology to a practice that has been around for decades.
Supreme Court won’t hear Giordano appeal in child-sex case
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has again refused to hear an appeal by former Waterbury Mayor Philip Giordano, who is fighting a 37-year prison sentence for sexually abusing two young girls while in office.
The court’s decision was released Monday. Justices previously refused to hear two earlier appeals by Giordano.
Giordano was challenging a federal appeals court decision in June to dismiss his request to set aside or correct his sentence. Giordano says the prison sentence is unconstitutional and his lawyer during his 2003 trial, Andrew Bowman, made several mistakes.
Bowman has denied that he provided ineffective counsel.
A federal jury convicted Giordano in 2003 of violating the civil rights of two girls, ages 8 and 10, by sexually abusing them in the mayor’s office and other locations.
High Court won’t hear appeal over Backpage.com escort ads
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court said Monday it won’t hear an appeal from three sex trafficking victims who accuse advertising website Backpage.com of helping to promote the exploitation of children.
The justices left in place a lower court ruling that said federal law shields Backpage from liability because the site is just hosting content created by people who use it.
The women say they were sold as prostitutes in Massachusetts and Rhode Island through advertisements for escort services on the site when they were as young as 15. They say Backpage is not protected by the Communications Decency Act because the company not only hosted the ads, but created a marketplace that makes child sex trafficking easier. Backpage has denied those allegations.
A federal judge threw out the lawsuit and the federal appeals court in Boston upheld that ruling.
Critics say the website has become an increasingly popular vehicle for commercial sexual exploitation. Senate investigators have called Backpage a market leader in sex advertising and it has been linked to hundreds of reported cases of sex trafficking.
Lawyers for the website have said the company does more than any other online classified site to prevent the trafficking of minors. They argue that Congress wrote the law to preserve free speech on the Internet by giving immunity to websites for items posted by third-party users.
Twenty-one states had signed onto a brief urging the high court to take up the case, arguing that federal law does not protect websites that help create or develop third-party content.
In a separate case last month, a California judge rejected pimping charges against Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer and former owners Michael Lacey and James Larkin, citing federal free speech laws. California officials have said they intend to pursue new charges against the company based on new evidence.
Prosecutors have alleged that more than 90 percent of Backpage’s revenue — millions of dollars each month — comes from adult escort ads that use coded language and nearly nude photos to offer sex for money.
