By Blake Brittain
(Reuters) -Alphabet’s Google sued Chile-based LATAM Airlines in U.S. federal court in San Jose, California on Thursday, seeking a declaration that Brazilian courts cannot force the tech giant to take down a YouTube video in the United States that accused a LATAM employee of sexually abusing a child.
Google in the lawsuit said that LATAM was attempting to “make an end-run” around protections for free speech under the U.S. Constitution by suing in Brazil to force the video’s removal worldwide.
Spokespeople for LATAM did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Google’s allegations.
Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said in a statement that the company has “long supported the legal principle that courts in a country have jurisdiction over content available in that country, but not over what content should be available in other countries.”
Right-wing social media companies Trump Media and Rumble filed a similar lawsuit in Florida in February against a Brazilian judge who had ordered them to remove the U.S.-based accounts of a leading supporter of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. A federal judge decided in the case that the companies were not required to comply with the order in the United States.
According to Google’s lawsuit, U.S. citizen and Florida resident Raymond Moreira posted two YouTube videos in 2018 of his 6-year-old son outlining allegations of sexual abuse that the child said he experienced from a LATAM employee while traveling as an unaccompanied minor.
Moreira sued LATAM in Florida in 2020 over the alleged abuse, which led to a confidential settlement.
LATAM sued Google in Brazil in 2018 seeking an order to remove the video from YouTube, which Google owns. Brazil’s highest court is set to consider next week whether it has the authority to order Google to take down the video worldwide.
Google asked the court in California on Thursday to declare that LATAM cannot force the tech giant to remove the video in the United States.
Canada’s Supreme Court upheld an order for Google to remove some search results worldwide in a separate case in 2018. A California judge halted that order’s U.S. enforcement in 2017.
(Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by David Bario and Will Dunham)
