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Ruling Issued on IMDb.com Challenge to CA Actor-Age Law

By Ross Todd
March 02, 2017

A federal judge in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction on February 22 halting a California state law that requires online entertainment database IMDb.com to remove actors' ages on request. IMDb.com v. Kenealy, 3:16-cv-06535. Judge Vince Chhabria of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California had made clear at a hearing earlier in February that he thought the law violated the First Amendment, although he held off ruling from the bench at that time.

California Civil Code §1798.83.5, which took effect on Jan. 1, is backed by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists union (see, http://bit.ly/2lLjDyj), and was billed as a tool to fight age discrimination in the entertainment industry. But in November, IMDb, an Amazon.com Inc. subsidiary, sued to block the law, claiming that it runs afoul of the First Amendment and the broad protections provided to websites by the Communications Decency Act (CDA).

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