James Domen is the founder and leader of the Church United, a non-profit religious corporation. A central tenant of this organization is that homosexuality could be cured. Church United had an account on the website Vimeo where it posted 89 videos. When Vimeo suspended that account in December 2018, both Domen and Church United filed suit in the Southern District of New York claiming discrimination based on sexual orientation and religion, including violations of New York and California laws. Vimeo defended its action by citing both its website Terms of Service and the Communications Decency Act, both of which related to its right to delete “objectionable content.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the lower court’s dismissal of Domen’s complaint and clarified the scope of Vimeo’s statutory protection. Domen v. Vimeo, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 21533. The decision also underscored the rights of a website’s owners to enforce their site’s terms of service.