Airbnb User Seeks Supreme Court Review of Race Bias Class Action

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African-American Airbnb users will continue to face discrimination unless the Supreme Court intervenes, according to the plaintiff in a civil rights class action lawsuit.

Plaintiff Gregory Selden argues the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit should not have denied him full-panel review of an order by the district court that deferred his Airbnb class action lawsuit to private arbitration.

Selden argues that sending the case to arbitration prevents him from getting the immediate injunctive relief he asked for in his complaint. Without such an injunction, he claims, both he and all Class Members in his proposed nationwide Class would be exposed to continued discriminatory harm from defendant Airbnb.

Meanwhile, he says, Airbnb would get “a sustained license to self-police its discriminatory conduct” just by putting an arbitration clause in its user agreements.

Selden filed this Airbnb class action lawsuit in May 2016, alleging that a Philadelphia Airbnb host denied him accommodations in March 2015 because of his race.

After that denial, Selden says he saw that the property was still listed as available on Airbnb. He set up two fake profiles, both with race listed as “white,” then used those profiles to inquire about the same property. Selden says the host immediately offered accommodations for both of the fake profiles.

When Selden confronted the host about the alleged discrimination, he claims the host “shamed” him for speaking up.

In his Airbnb class action lawsuit, Selden alleges that Airbnb routinely ignores complaints of alleged racial discrimination. He cites a New York Times article from June 2016, reporting on Airbnb’s allegedly discriminatory activities.

A statistical analysis from Harvard University also purportedly shows that compared to Airbnb users with white-seeming names, users whose names were noticeably African-American were around 16 percent less likely to be accepted as guests by Airbnb hosts.

This alleged ongoing discrimination is why an immediate injunction is necessary, Selden argues. Without such an injunction, more and more African-American Airbnb users would continue to be subject to unlawful discriminatory harm while his case proceeds in a private forum where no injunctive relief is available, Selden says.

While most court decisions made during a lawsuit aren’t appealable until the lawsuit has run its full course, Selden argues he can appeal the district court’s order now because it has the effect of denying him an injunction. Denials of injunctions can be appealed before the lawsuit continues, he says.

The district court granted Airbnb’s motion to compel arbitration in November 2016. Selden appealed to the D.C. Circuit, which upheld the district court’s decision, then denied Selden’s request for an en banc review.

Since Selden filed his Airbnb lawsuit, the company has reportedly taken steps to address racial discrimination on its platform. The company initiated a review in the summer of 2016, hiring former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and former ACLU head Laura Murphy to help develop a new nondiscrimination policy.

Selden is represented by Ikechukwu Emejuru and Andrew Nyombi of Emejuru & Nyombi LLC.

The Airbnb Racial Discrimination Class Action Lawsuit is Gregory Selden, et al. v. Airbnb Inc., Case No. 17-79, in the U.S. Supreme Court.