Facebook class action gets green light after Supreme Court declines to hear appeal

Audrey Boctor, one of the lawyers behind the suit, said the top court's ruling means the case can now move toward an eventual trial.

A class-action lawsuit alleging Facebook illegally allowed advertisers to target users based on their race, age and gender can move forward after the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from the social media giant.

Facebook had sought to have Canada’s highest court overturn a Quebec Court of Appeal decision authorizing the class action.

Audrey Boctor, one of the lawyers behind the suit, said the top court’s ruling means the case can now move toward an eventual trial.

“We know for sure now that the class action can go ahead,” she said in an interview Monday. “Facebook had asked the Supreme Court to hear the case and the Supreme Court declined, so that means that the Court of Appeal’s judgment stands and now we go forward to the merits.”

The Supreme Court said Thursday it will not hear the case, declining to provide reasons for its decision as is customary.

The suit was brought on behalf of Lyse Beaulieu, a 65-year-old woman who was looking for a new job. She alleges she was never shown employment ads on the social media site, despite being an active user, because advertisers chose to exclude people her age.

The suit — filed in 2019 when the company known today as Meta Platforms Inc., was still called Facebook — alleges the social media site violated Quebec’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms by offering advertisers tools to target housing and employment ads to users based on their age, race and gender and ensuring that people from outside those targeted groups wouldn’t see the ads.

It also alleges Facebook’s algorithm excluded people from seeing certain ads for reasons prohibited by law and claims the platform allowed ads that were explicitly discriminatory in their language.