U.S. Supreme Court tosses case challenging internet legal shield

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday sidestepped a challenge to federal protections for internet and social media companies that free them of liability for content posted by users in a case involving a lawsuit against Google LLC involving the practices of video-sharing platform YouTube.

The justices, in a brief and unsigned ruling, returned to a lower court a lawsuit by the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, a 23-year-old college student from California who was fatally shot in an Islamic State attack in Paris in 2015, of a lower court’s decision to throw out their lawsuit. Google and YouTube are part of Alphabet Inc.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)