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WASHINGTON<\/strong> : The Supreme Court on Thursday sidestepped a case against Google that might have allowed more lawsuits against social media companies.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n The justices’ decision returns to a lower court the case of a family of an American college student who was killed in an Islamic State terrorist attack in Paris.<\/p>\n The family wants to sue Google for YouTube videos they said helped attract IS recruits and radicalise them. Google owns YouTube.<\/p>\n Google claims immunity from the lawsuit under a 1996 law that generally protects social media companies for content posted by others. Lower courts agreed with Google.<\/p>\n The justices had agreed to consider whether the legal shield is too broad. But in arguments in February, several sounded reluctant to weigh in now.<\/p>\n In an unsigned opinion on Thursday, the court wrote that it was declining to address the law at issue.<\/p>\n The outcome is, at least for now, a victory for the tech industry, which predicted havoc on the internet if Google lost. But the high court remains free to take up the issue in a later case.<\/p>\n The court also ruled in a separate lawsuit involving Google, Twitter and Facebook, heard on the same day in February, that seeks to hold them liable for a terrorist attack in a Turkish nightclub that killed 39 people.<\/p>\n A lower court allowed the suit to proceed under a law against aiding and abetting terrorism.<\/p>\n The justices’ unanimously ruled that the case could not go forward.<\/p>\n \t <\/p>\n