Judge likely to keep light on actors’ ages
For Hollywood’s vain actors, it might soon get harder to hide their age.
No, they are not outlawing Botox or facelifts — but a San Francisco federal judge appears close to tossing a state law that would require Web sites like IMDb to delete an actor’s date of birth if requested to do so.
Judge Vince Chhabria has informed a lawyer for the state that he couldn’t remember a case “as challenging to defend as the one you’re defending now.”
“Let’s see you dance,” the judge said at a Thursday hearing.
Chhabria appears to believe the state law is such violation of free speech that he warned the assistant attorney general that continuing to defend the measure would only divert more taxpayer dollars to IMDb’s lawyers.
“Have you given serious thought to the probability that by pressing forward with discovery your clients could be exposed to a dramatically higher fee award?” he asked.
IMDb sued the state in November — two months after it enacted a bill requiring sites like IMDb to remove upon request, or not reveal at all, actors’ ages and birthdays.
The birth date battle dates to 2011 when actress Junie Hoang filed a “Jane Doe” suit against IMDb for posting her age. That suit was dismissed. Following all unsuccessful appeals, two sympathetic actors unions pressed state legislators to enact the law in question.
The state attorney argued the bill didn’t cripple free speech because it applied only to select subscription services.
The state wanted to curb Hollywood’s rampant age discrimination, the lawyer said.
But the judge countered: “How does preventing one Web site of the millions of Web sites out there publishing people’s age even remotely help prevent age discrimination?”