Sexual orientation questions keep Roommates.com from Safe Harbor berth

From Ars Technica :

Roommates.com found itself on the wrong end of a judicial ruling yesterday as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that asking questions about applicants' gender and sexual orientation removed the site's Safe Harbor protection under the Communications Decency Act.

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So much for the question portion of the Roommates.com sign-up process. But there's also a free-form answer area at the end of the questions in which users can post anything that they want. The Judge notes in a series of footnotes that past responses have included, "The female we are looking for hopefully wont [sic] mind having a little sexual incounter [sic] with my boyfriend and I [very sic]" and "I am looking for asian/spanish persons to share the apartment." Some of the qualifications that appear in this section might also violate the Fair Housing Act, but the Court found that Roommates.com was not responsible for responses left on an open-ended form (one judge dissented from this part of the ruling).