Facebook will pay $5 million and implement a series of anti-discrimination policies to settle a lawsuit brought against it by national fair housing advocates.
In March 2018, the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), the American Civil Liberties Union, the Communication Workers of America, and others filed a lawsuit against Facebook in federal court in New York City, alleging that Facebook’s advertising platform enabled landlords and real estate brokers to exclude people of color, families with children, women, people with disabilities, the elderly, and other protected groups from receiving housing ads. The lawsuit alleged that Facebook created prepopulated lists that made it possible for its housing advertisers to “exclude” (in the company’s own terminology) certain demographics from seeing ads for real estate, apartment rentals, employment opportunities, and credit services/products.
