Airbnb appeals Boston STR rules in court

This is a case about a city trying to conscript home-sharing platforms into
enforcing regulations on the city’s behalf, in a manner that would thwart both federal and
Massachusetts law. The City of Boston has enacted an Ordinance limiting short-term residential
rentals by hosts. But it goes much further than that The Ordinance also enlists home-sharing
platforms like Airbnb into enforcing those limits under threat of draconian penalties, including
$300-per-violation-per-day fines and complete banishment from doing business in Boston.
Airbnb believes that home-sharing may be lawfully regulated, and it has worked with dozens of
cities to develop the tools they need to do so without violating federal or state law. Boston’s
heavy-handed approach, however, crosses several clear legal lines and must be invalidated.

The Ordinance also forces home-sharing platforms like Airbnb to
actively police third-party content on their websites by penalizing the design and operation of
their platforms and restricting and imposing severe financial burdens on protected commercial
speech. And it requires Airbnb to disclose to the City confidential information about its users
without any legal process or precompliance review. This regime violates the Communications
Decency Act (47 U.S.C. § 230), the Stored Communications Act (18 U.S.C. §§ 2701 et seq.), the
First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, and the Massachusetts
Declaration of Rights.