Judge rejects Airbnb bid to block San Francisco law

A federal judge has rejected Airbnb’s request to block enforcement of a San Francisco law that prevents the platform from accepting rental listings that are not properly registered with the city.

Airbnb, the short-term housing rental website, had sought an injunction to stop the city from enforcing the ordinance. The company had said the law would force them to police their site for unregistered listings. They also said the ordinance violated broader laws that protect companies from liability for things posted on their platforms.

{mosads}But their injunction request was denied by U.S. District Judge James Donato on Tuesday.

The judge dismissed Airbnb’s First Amendment concerns, saying that the San Francisco law was not intended to regulate content on their site.

“It does not regulate what can or cannot be said or posted in the listings. It creates no obligation on plaintiffs’ part to monitor, edit, withdraw or block the content supplied by hosts,” he said of the law, dismissing Airbnb’s concerns.

According to the judge, San Francisco had also made clear that Airbnb could publish unregistered listings without legal action.

Donato did note that Airbnb still had different grounds for an injunction because the city did not have a “functional verification system” to determine who had actually registered their homes with the city.

The district judge called for further proceedings on Nov. 17 to assess this.

“While we appreciate that the judge has acknowledged our concerns about the inadequacy of the screening obligations in the new law and will continue postponing enforcement of these rules, we respectfully disagree with the remainder of his ruling,” Airbnb spokesperson Christopher Nulty wrote in an email.

“No matter what happens in this case, we want to work with the City to fix the broken system long before the legal process runs its course.”

Until 2015, San Francisco had banned “tourist or transient” rentals out of concerns it would decrease the housing stock in their city. That ban had kept Airbnb out of its market. The ban was lifted conditionally if users hosts registered spaces they intended to rent out.