Yelp Can't Be Forced to Remove Defamatory Reviews, Court Says

Yelp Inc. can’t be forced by a state judge to remove a defamatory review of a law firm from its website, the California Supreme Court said. The state’s top court agreed with the online review platform in a split decision Monday that it’s shielded by the Communications Decency Act, the federal law that immunizes website operators from legal claims over users’ postings. The majority overturned an appellate court’s ruling that San Francisco-based Yelp could be ordered to remove the review, even though the company itself wasn’t sued by the law firm over the unflattering opinion by a disgruntled client.