U.S. federal agency charges Facebook with housing discrimination

The U.S. Department of housing and Urban Development (HUD) Thursday charged Facebook with housing discrimination on its advertising platform.

The HUD said in a statement that Facebook has violated the Fair housing Act by unlawfully blocking housing-related ads on its platform and across the internet from reaching a specified group of people on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion and sex.

"Facebook is discriminating against people based upon who they are and where they live," said HUD Secretary Ben Carson.

"Using a computer to limit a person's housing choices can be just as discriminatory as slamming a door in someone's face," Carson added.

According to the HUD complaint, Facebook allowed advertisers to exclude people who were classified as "non-American-born," "non-Christian" or "interested in Hispanic culture" among other things.

The HUD accused Facebook of giving advertisers the option of showing ads only to men or only to women.

The federal charges resulted from an investigation in August of last year, which addressed a formal complaint that home sellers and landlords can target ads across a broad range of different categories via Facebook's ads tool.

The HUD's charges will be heard by a U.S. Administrative Law Judge unless the HUD or Facebook choose to move the case to a federal district court.

U.S. civil rights group American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Thursday welcomed the HUD to demand Facebook change its ads policy.

"It's welcome news that HUD is continuing to pressure Facebook to change its ad targeting platform," ACLU tweeted.

"While many practices named in this complaint will be addressed by our settlement with Facebook, we hope HUD's suit will help eliminate biased targeting on the platform completely," said the non-profit rights advocacy group in the tweeted post.

The HUD complaint came only nine days after Facebook reached settlement with the ACLU over discriminatory advertising practices.

In the settlement, Facebook agreed to make changes to its paid advertising platform to prevent discrimination in housing, employment and credit ads.

Facebook said it will no longer allow housing, employment or credit advertisers to discriminate users based on their race, sex, age or zip code.

In response to the HUD's accusation on Thursday, a Facebook spokesperson told media that the company was "surprised" by the HUD decision and that it has adopted measures to address concerns in the HUD filing.

"We've been working with them to address their concerns and have taken significant steps to prevent ads discrimination," Facebook said.