In February, the social media companies Trump Media and Rumble launched a legal dispute in Florida. They challenged a Brazilian judge’s order to remove U.S.-based accounts linked to a prominent supporter of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
A U.S. federal judge later ruled that the companies were not required to enforce the order within the United States.
Google’s lawsuit, filed in San Jose, California, states that Raymond Moreira, a U.S. citizen living in Florida, uploaded two YouTube videos in 2018. In the videos, his 6-year-old shared claims that a LATM employee sexually abused him while he was flying alone as an unaccompanied minor.
In 2020, Moreira filed a lawsuit against LATAM in Florida over the alleged abuse, which was later resolved through a confidential settlement.
However, LATAM filed a lawsuit against Google in Brazil, asking the court to order the removal of the YouTube video. Brazil's highest court is expected to decide next week whether it can demand the video be taken down globally.
In response, Google filed a case in California on Thursday, asking the court to rule that LATAM cannot make the company remove the video within the United States.
A similar situation happened in Canada, where the Supreme Court upheld a takedown order of certain Google search results in 2018. However, a California judge had already blocked that order from being enforced in the U.S. back in 2017.
As Brazil’s highest court prepares to make a decision, the case highlights how managing online content across countries is becoming more complicated.
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