A federal judge denied Visa’s request to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that the card network profited from online sexual videos of minors, while also rejecting some of the plaintiffs’ claims.
The ruling last month by U.S. District Judge Wesley Hsu in Los Angeles stems from litigation dating to 2021 against MindGeek, a Montreal-based parent company of Pornhub and other pornography sites; San Francisco-based Visa; and several individual defendants.
Serena Fleitas is the named lead plaintiff in the case, along with 33 others identified as Jane Doe, according to court records. The plaintiffs allege that MindGeek and Visa colluded to profit from the videos.
In his July 9 order, Hsu denied Visa’s motion to dismiss with respect to claims under California’s Unfair Competition Law and the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.
He also denied the company’s claim that plaintiffs had no standing to bring the lawsuit in federal court because Visa did not directly cause the plaintiffs’ injuries. “Visa’s conduct enabled MindGeek to monetize trafficking content and provided the financial infrastructure to sustain its operations,” Hsu said, citing his own opinion from an earlier motion to dismiss the case four years ago.
At the same time, Hsu dismissed with prejudice the plaintiffs’ allegation that Visa participated in a civil conspiracy with MindGeek, adding that “relevant defects” with the claim could not be fixed.
A spokesperson for Visa declined to comment Friday. The card network is also a defendant in 14 related cases stemming from payment processing for the online porn operator.
Hsu’s ruling is “an important step in holding Visa accountable,” Michael Bowe, an attorney for plaintiffs with the law firm Brithem, said Friday in an emailed statement. He said the plaintiffs contend that Visa excused MindGeek from its merchant standards “because of the volume of transactions MindGeek generated.”
The plaintiffs allege that Visa stopped allowing its cards to be used at MindGeek only after The New York Times reported in December 2020 on the experience of Fleitas, who filed her lawsuit in June 2021 in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.
Fleitas said her boyfriend coerced her into sending him videos of herself nude when she was 14 and then uploaded them to Pornhub without her knowledge.
In 2022, Visa and rival Mastercard both suspended the ability of MindGeek’s advertising arm, called TrafficJunky, to accept their cards.
MindGeek was sold in 2023 to a Canadian private equity firm, Ethical Capital Partners, and subsequently changed its name to Aylo. Aylo did not respond to a message Friday seeking comment on the litigation.
Separately, on July 22, Hsu denied Visa’s request for sanctions against the plaintiffs’ attorneys under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The company argued in an April motion that plaintiffs had made baseless allegations in their complaint. The rule permits a court to impose sanctions if it finds a filing is legally frivolous or factually misleading, Hsu said.
Visa and the plaintiffs have asked Hsu to give the company until Sept. 8 to file its response to the lawsuit, in light of the ruling.
