Facebook Lawsuit Alleging Racial Discrimination in Housing Ads Tossed

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Facebook Lawsuit Overview:

• Who: A federal judge put a Facebook lawsuit claiming housing ads posted on the site were discriminatory to rest. 
• Why: Plaintiffs claimed that the ad platform used gender, sex, and disability to exclude certain profiles from seeing ads for housing, but the judge found that the plaintiffs had failed to demonstrate any concrete injury from the practice. 
• Where: The Facebook lawsuit was pending in California federal court. 

A class action lawsuit alleging that Facebook discriminates against users based on their race with the housing advertisements it allows them to see has been tossed by a California federal judge.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick ruled that the Facebook users failed to show that Facebook’s advertising tools excluded them from more desirable housing options as alleged, that they were unable to show concrete damages, and, above all, could not file the claim because it was barred by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

Facebook Lawsuit Claims Housing Discrimination Using Ad Tools

The class action lawsuit was the third version the Facebook users had filed, after it had been rejected twice before.

It stems from allegations by four Black and Hispanic New York residents who say that Facebook violates the Fair Housing Act by barring some users from seeing ads based on factors such as race, sex, and disability.

Rosemarie Vargas, Kisha Skipper, Jazmine Spencer, and Deillo Richards claim that Facebook creates a list of certain demographics, interests, and behaviors, which allows real estate brokers and landlords to hide ads from certain populations.  

“This Ad Platform allowed and/or facilitated omission of certain Facebook users based on their real or perceived personal characteristics, by purposefully and intentionally creating, developing, and/or using the ‘Exclude People’ feature,” the plaintiffs alleged in their original Facebook lawsuit.

In addition, the Facebook class action also states that the Ad Platform includes users who have “favored” characteristics, which thus excludes those who do not have those certain features.

Beefed-Up Facebook Lawsuit Fails to Make the Grade, Rules Judge

An amended complaint, ordered by the judge, said that the company denied the New Yorkers “access to the full market of potential housing advertisements.” 

Vargas says in the class action lawsuit that, as a “disabled female of Hispanic descent” who was a single mother to two children, she was shown different and less desirable housing options than when conducting the same housing search with the same filters as a white male.

The class action lawsuit is one of many alleging that Facebook allows advertisers to choose filters that exclude different groups of people from seeing their ads.

However, Judge Orrick ruled that Vargas and the other plaintiffs had failed to prove that they had suffered any concrete injury from Facebook’s advertising system.

“Plaintiffs do not attempt to allege that housing was generally available in their desired markets – much less that housing Ads satisfying those criteria were being placed in Facebook – under the criteria that any of the plaintiffs were using during the times they were using Facebook to search for housing,” the judge wrote.

“That is fatal to plaintiffs’ standing.”

Ultimately, Orrick said, the Facebook users claims could not have moved ahead even if they did prove damages, as it couldn’t get around Facebook’s immunity provided by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

Do you think that Facebook should have to take action over the allegedly discriminatory ad filters? Let us know in the comments section below!

The plaintiffs are represented by Michael D. Seplow, Wilmer Harris, and Aidan C. McGlaze of Schonbrun Seplow Harris & Hoffman LLP; Gerard V. Mantese, David Honigman, and Kathryn Eisenstein of Mantese Honigman PC; and Patricia A. Stamler, Elizabeth Thomson, and Matthew Turchyn of Hertz Schram PC.

The Facebook Housing Discrimination Class Action Lawsuit is Vargas, et al. v. Facebook Inc. Case No. 3:19-cv-05081, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

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