Woman Kicked Off Facebook Loses Lawsuit
A Maryland woman who got kicked off Facebook won’t be able to pursue her lawsuit under a ruling by a California federal judge.
U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled late last month, finding no First Amendment violation and no breach of contract, according to the blogs Internet Cases and Technology and Marketing Law.
Karen Beth Young of Maryland sued after being kicked off Facebook for friending people she didn’t know—action she took, she says, because she thought her would-be friends would be interested in cancer awareness, according to the Forbes blog Kashmir Hill. Before her ouster, Young had about 4,300 friends on her personal page.
Young claimed she was booted from Facebook after she objected to harassment from other Facebook users that began when she spoke out against a “prayer for death” page that mentioned President Obama.
Young had claimed in the pro se suit that Facebook violated her First Amendment rights and violated its own statement of rights and responsibilities by failing to protect her from harassment.
Fogel said Facebook isn’t a state actor and can’t be liable under the First Amendment, despite contracts allowing Facebook pages for federal agencies. He also said Facebook’s statement of rights and responsibilities does not create an affirmative obligation on its part to police online bullying.
Fogel noted the possibility of liability for arbitrary or bad faith termination of user accounts, but he said Young hadn’t made such an allegation. “Instead, she alleges that she was deprived of human interaction [in] the process surrounding the termination of her account,” he wrote.
