One of President Trump's lawyers asked the Supreme Court to hear a case that could weaken web platforms' legal protections

Charles Harder, part of President Donald Trump’s legal team, is pushing the Supreme Court to hear a lawsuit that could weaken legal protections for web platforms. Harder’s firm announced that it had filed a petition in Hassell v. Bird, a defamation case that California’s Supreme Court decided in July. The court ruled that recommendations site Yelp couldn’t be forced to remove a defamatory review from its site, based on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — a legal shield that’s been criticized by Republican politicians in recent months. According to CA court records, the Supreme Court petition was filed Oct 1st. Harder’s press release characterizes it as a chance to “vindicate the rights of all small business owners and all individuals in allowing them to ask a Court to order the removal of defamatory statements that threaten to destroy [their] businesses and personal reputations.” Yelp has described the suit as “a case that had threatened the rights of online platforms that allow people to freely share their thoughts and the billions of people that do so.”