(credit: Marco Paköeningrat)

Three Facebook users have sued the social networking giant over alleged discriminatory policies that they say violate the Federal Housing Act of 1964.

Late last month, ProPublica published a story outlining the fact that Facebook’s advertising mechanism allowed for housing ads to exclude a specific “Ethnic Affinity,” such as “African-American” or “Asian-American.” ProPublica managed to post a fake housing ad and excluded anyone with an “affinity” for African-American, Asian-American, or Hispanic people. When the ProPublica reporters showed the ad to prominent civil rights lawyer John Relman, he described it as “horrifying” and “as blatant a violation of the federal Fair Housing Act as one can find.”

According to the proposed class-action lawsuit, by allowing such ads on its site, Facebook is in violation of the landmark civil rights legislation, which specifically prohibits housing advertisements to discriminate based on race, gender, color, religion, and other factors.