so my associate is on the line and she is her name is medicare and she's the one arguing today but we do see her but we can't hear do you have multiple microphones the court my name is now he gerund and i represent the appellant and plaintiffs james stillman and church united this case is about the communications decency act also commonly known as section t discriminate against a user and ban them from their platform arm based on intentional and unlawful sexual orientation and religious discrimination against a man and church united proud this law discriminated not against content but against james dumb and himself and based on his sexual orientation and that it wasn't a ban on the content it was a ban on these part particular users and a permanent is not an issue if for example the neo would have deleted it particularly sexual orientation change effort content that that that wouldn't be the case here the case here is banning users do you mean and you know united you don't dispute that that what he posted violated the terms of service that judge pooler has been focusing on is that right you're focusing on things rather than just taking it down on their decision to end his closes account is that correct so close the account delete eighty nine dollars videos most of which have nothing to do with any sexual orientation change efforts and permanently banned these users from even posting a video about cookie baking for example so it's not the content it is the conduct of video and targeting and that is correct but based on the allegations in the complaint the allegations are intentional discrimination based on sexual orientation and religion now whether or not that's true isn't at issue if they find that some of the content is in violation of the policies yes there are so so your client began using the website knowing that if it had a dispute  with regard to some of his content there was the possibility that all of its content might be removed from from the website but you but it seems to me what the problem is is that you're saying it's not about it's the content but you really mean it is about the content because you say because they asked the content to be taken down and threw us off the hall because of that content they threw us off a website i don't understand  intentional discrimination and at the pleading steve's the allegations must be taken as true and the police do allege that this was intentional lawful discrimination we let's disparate treatment but you legal conclusions i think we're asking or our of i'm interested in knowing what specific allegations you have to back up those legal conclusions we don't have to accept those  yes we do what highlights this ific videos that are similar in nature that were not taken down by them you know which shows an inference a minimum possible inference discrimination and nonetheless the plaintiff should have been given an opportunity to amend the complaint if that was the issue if it was the sufficiency of the allegation but here the lower court decided and know contends that even if it is true that that there was intentional unlawful discrimination that it's immune based on the cd a particularly problematic is  problematic weren't targeted it was the users that were permanently banned from a business service based on the discrimination or co discriminate against anybody based on their religion sexuality or or form or sexual orientation they made the editorial decision to remove discriminatory content from its website and i want to refer to page five of the appellant's brief because this is mission is made very clear here they say and this is that the last paragraph before section two here a liability is based on vimeo refusing to provide service to plaintiffs who published content on bemuse platform because it does not agree with church united or domains content and i want to emphasize the word content and we agree with this we do not agree with their content we took a position against so she sexual orientation chains efforts content we publish that on our website for all to see well before mr domain opened his account when he  to count we gave him notice very specific notice that he had he was host he was publishing this content and that he had to remove it and i think there was a question earlier is did did mr domain get notice of that of course you did  it's actually exhibit a to the complaint he received a notice from video saying you have uploaded content in violation our terms to its s o c e content please take action immediately we review again and if that content is not removed you may lose your account well what happened he you know that the entirety of the correspondence is not in the record but he alleges that five videos are specifically identified so we knew exactly which ones dispute now on appeal that these actually violated the terms and he doesn't do anything thirteen days go by the moderator looks back at the account well nothing's been done no action has been taken and this is not only account that hosted book content that violate our terms it is now a willful violation because he's refused to remove content after being put on specific notice so at this point they do what most reasonable service providers do they remove the entire count eighty nine dollars videos and all and that is a reasonable exercise of a service provider's discretion combat the issue of content removal and content on line in overlapping passions so there's no doubt here these two these two provisions interact with one another the st one c one is about publishing says you shall not treat the defendant as a publisher of another's information content and the reason why that provision is in play is because to be a publisher is the status of being a publisher is to make decisions about whether or not to remove or publish content it is inherent in the word of publisher that we make a decision and so it has to cover not only the affirmative act of publishing but also the affirmative c two speaks more directly to the issue of contention but just because something might be a better fit doesn't mean that the other stuff story section also doesn't apply me like the st amendment also applies the if you look i prodigy is held treated as a publisher because it is removed constant content but not all content so the very act of removing content is what causes it to become a publisher in the st place so therefore so the question was were they were they analogous to a newspaper publisher the newspaper publisher repeats a slander becomes libel and the publisher of my publishing your creates an it's a new charge every time it's republished other people and and not acquiring person liability or or corporate liability for the simple fact of posting i recognize the cases subsequently as said while there is a decision to post or not to pose and  courts have said well the decision of not posting is also a function of publishing and so there who are protected by the union but rich in reality the original focus was on the information that had been put up and was causing liability with regard to slanderous or libelous act as a right to that i would say your honor that the focus was actually twofold i want to win the congress wanted to encourage you know free expression on the internet but also wanted to encourage the websites to self regulate and so what the main thing to not like about the product the way stratton oakmont came out is that it creates a disincentive to to moderate your site at all in other words  it forces the provider to either do nothing and become like like the compuserve case took a hands off approach and thus become a distributor under common law and then you just let everything bad content good content or you take an overly content removal as i understand your adversary's argument she's saying that there was inconsistent in its practices with regard to content remove all and that we should be drop an inference that it was because of discriminatory reasons that it ended up closing this account rapidly and didn't take similar actions with regard to other users of its platform well what should we understand that correctly but the allegations of bad faith are as as a spectrum of nonexistent threadbare there there on that the closer to nonexistent i mean all you have is paragraph forty five the complaint which lists seven videos one of which is called gate a stranger one of which is called homosexuality is not allowed in the qur'an these prove nothing these days don't show that we discriminate against this guy based on on his sexual orientation these show that we have a range of videos on the site expressing different viewpoints and says  things violate any policy but i would say that the even going into this this analysis even trying to go into this analysis of saying ok there's some content on your site that you haven't removed that's going to be true in every case involving a service provider requiring us to go improve in all these unrelated cases that we are one hundred percent consistent in our in our in our content enforcement policies that that itself is very problematic under under section two  wanted and what congress wanted to do was focus on this specific case did they in this specific case exercise good faith as to section two hundred and thirty c two and the evidence here your honor is one hundred percent clear that we exercised more than good faith we are i what i read justice thomas concurring statement to to to to be is really next rotation to courts to make sure that they're following the text of the statute and not going too far or i on on making policy decisions but the things see one it covers only you know content not created by the service provider whereas c two covers any materials regardless of the author c one would not cover a case where the  defendant is being sued as a counter party has made a very specific promise see to would apply to that there's a very specific provision in c to be for d filtering software that appears nowhere and see one so there's all kinds of ways internet provider can still be and being the users for any reason whatsoever whether there is good faith or not and that is that at the heart of this appeal because that would have grave consequences and th difference in language and see why and see to it's clear and its meaning for and see to says that an internet provider is not liable for restricting access or availability of materials that specifically related to removing content and as opposed to see one where you're treating an internet platform as a publisher or speaker of thomas mentioned that being that conflates the two sections will result in protecting companies who quote racially discriminate and removing content not the biggest issue in this case thank you