SAN FRANCISCO—The home sharing site Airbnb is suing the city of San Francisco over the new law which requires home owners using its rental site to register their homes. If Airbnb lists a home that isn’t registered with the city they can face daily a $1,000 fine per day.

According to Yahoo News, Airbnb believes that the new law violates the federal Communications Decency Act and the Store Communications Act. The new law requires registrants to submit the requisite paper work in-person alone with a $50 fee. Airbnb wrote on a blog post on its site that states the new law “will harm thousands of everyday San Francisco residents who depend on Airbnb.”

According to the New York Times, two years ago the city and the company drafted a law that allowed Airbnb to operate within the city. During that time,  the start-up faced criticism and blowback from supporters of affordable housing. The law went into effect last February and is known as the “Airbnb law.” The New York Times reported  on Monday, June 27, the company sued the city over a unanimous decision that was made on June 7 by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. The board decided that Airbnb would be fined $1,000 a day for host who is unregistered who used the service.

The Wall Street Journal received an emailed state from Matt Dorsey, a spokesman for San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera that argued that the ordinance isn’t towards Airbnb and its online content, but the real world business that the company is facilitating.

“Nothing in San Francisco’s pending ordinance punishes hosting platforms for their users’ content,” said  Dorsey. “In fact, it’s not regulating user content at all—it’s regulating the business activity of the hosting platform itself.”

Airbnb wrote in a blog post: “We had ongoing conversations with policymakers in City Hall and sought to encourage hosts to register in order to make the process work. Over the last year, we have held eleven town hall meetings to explain the registration process, repeatedly emailed hosts to encourage them to register, and convened scores of meetings with individual hosts to help walk them through the required registration steps.”  In the blog, Airbnb list five statements they believe describes the proposal which can be seen here.

Airbnb Sues San Francisco Over Rental Registration Law was originally published on San Francisco News