SFJ has been trying to bring Indian politicians to court in the US.
By Raif Karerat
In a key victory for Facebook, a U.S. court has ruled the social media giant can block content without any explanation, after a Sikh group filed a lawsuit challenging the blocking of its social media page.
The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed against the social media titan by the organization Sikhs for Justice, which alleged that its Facebook page, which advocated Sikh separatism, was blocked by the social media giant.
According to the Press Trust of India, San Francisco district judge Lucy Koh stated in her Nov. 13 ruling that that the Sikh group’s claims of religious discrimination “are precluded under the Communications Decency Act, which protects providers of interactive computer services by barring courts from treating service providers like Facebook as the publishers or speakers of speech created by others.”
SFJ’s attorney, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, made a statement insinuating the organization would be lodging an appeal to challenge the decision, claiming it was done at the behest of the Indian government.
“Facebook is an American Corporation and owes allegiance to US Constitution which promotes and protects free speech content and not accede to threats of foreign governments but Judge Koh’s ruling failed to cover any of the allegations of SFJ,” he said.
“If Facebook is a public company making billions of dollars in public money and they don’t want to give any explanation for why they blocked the content of a human rights group, then what is the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship?” he continued.
The Sikhs for Justice have continuously tried to bring politicians from India to stand trial in courts in the US, without any success. They have lost all the cases they had lodged so far against alleged atrocities against Sikhs in India, decades ago.