Suing The Sex-Negative Credit Card Processors
Here’s an interesting story that I missed in late April on the Mikandi blog:
The latest hit to companies who are actively anti-sex industry is a lawsuit against the payment processor Square. Xbiz reports that attorney William McGrane is taking them to court with the claim that the 27 business categories in Stripe’s “Prohibited Businesses” are being discriminated against and having their civil rights violated under the policy.
According to McGrane, the majority of the types of businesses listed are either too vague to be valid or are legal businesses, making it illegal forSquare to discriminate against them.
While the suit was originally filed on behalf of a bankruptcy law firm that was dropped fromSquare because “bankruptcy and debt collection” is also a prohibited category, anyone who works in a sex-related field who used Square but then was dropped may be eligible to be a part of the lawsuit.
The relevant section here is “Adult content and services,” which Square defines as “Adult entertainment oriented products or services (in any medium, including Internet, telephone or printed material).”
I like this because no matter how the suit comes out, the lawsuit itself establishes a cost for discriminating against adult businesses. If it gets expensive enough, these companies will have to narrow and tighten their policies, rather than engaging in sweeping discrimination against an entire legal business category. #Pornocalypse happens because of commercial pressures. If this suit is successful in establishing that Pornocalypse policies come with a quantum of legal risk, perhaps that will serve as some countervailing commercial pressure in the other direction.
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