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Our Founding Fathers wrote in the Declaration of Independence, that all men "are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights." In response to lawsuits filed against Yelp, Congress has ruled that these rights now include the right to complain.

As humans evolved, the ability to evaluate and compare was necessary for survival. By taking in a new person, place, or thing then mentally categorizing it with something already known, our ancestors, ideally, could tell friend from foe. In modern times, it’s not quite as life or death, but the ability to rate and compare things is still crucial to how our brain works and businesses have found a way to capitalize.

Companies like Yelp have utilized that natural behavior and branded it so that we can, for example, avoid food poisoning or a bad haircut. Because we are programmed to learn and remember more from negative experiences than positive ones, folks scrolling through the platform’s numerous reviews are likely to take away more from scathing comments than glowing ones.

This issue was at the center of a California lawsuit in 2013, when a San Francisco legal firm took Yelp to court, requesting the removal of negative reviews from their site. A lawyer at the firm claimed a former client had defamed her on Yelp and accused her of misconduct that never occurred; when that client would not reply to a direct lawsuit asking to take down the posts, the lawyer took her suit to the review site. The judge agreed the statements posted were defamatory and ordered their removal. A subsequent appeals court upheld the decision.

This case has made its way through the state’s judiciary system and in September of 2016, was placed on the docket to be reviewed by the California Supreme Court. The point of debate lies in the precedent this case might set. Yelp claims that upholding the ruling to take down the posts would open the door for other businesses to do the same. Other Internet powerhouses, like Facebook and Microsoft, have been vocal in their support of Yelp. Company leaders penned a letter to the court saying such a ruling would “silence a vast quantity of protected and important speech.”

The California case isn’t the only one that’s been fought on this. Similar litigation has been filed in Washington, where a locksmith filed a libel lawsuit against Yelp after getting a one-star review. He claimed the rating was actually meant for another area business, but that Yelp had linked it with his page as part of a scheme to generate more ad revenue. Libel is defined as the published or broadcasted “untruth about another which will do harm to that person or his/her reputation, by tending to bring the target into ridicule, hatred, scorn, or contempt of others.”