Lawyers for the portal argued that the US constitutional right to freedom of speech protects it against the French ruling which, in any event, required technologically impossible changes to its web servers.
The anti-racism groups which brought the original action in France against Yahoo! argued that the US case should be postponed to allow for investigation of Yahoo!’s claim that closing access to French users was impossible.
However, US District Judge Jeremy Fogel observed: “even if discovery showed that Yahoo! could easily shut access just to French viewers, would that still not be a burden on speech, a chilling of speech under the First Amendment?”
The case is continuing.