Meta faces appeal of $150 billion hate speech lawsuit over role in Myanmar genocide

(CN) — Myanmar refugees appealed the dismissal of $150 billion class action against Meta, formerly Facebook, over claims that the company failed to curb hate speech that fueled their country’s brutal Rohingya genocide.

After the case was tossed earlier this year due to an expired statute of limitations, two anonymous plaintiffs urged a panel of Ninth Circuit judges Wednesday to reverse the decision and let the case proceed in the lower courts.

“They knew these algorithms are dangerous and they didn’t step in,” Roger Perlstadt of Edelson PC, who represents the plaintiffs, said during oral arguments at the William K. Nakamura Courthouse in Seattle, Washington.

The Rohingya are a predominantly Muslim stateless ethnic group that resided in Western Myanmar. Since 2017, the government of Myanmar has subjected the group to a ruthless genocide resulting in more than 25,000 deaths; over 740,000 have fled to neighboring Bangladesh fearing continued violence.

According to the lawsuit, Facebook’s algorithms elevated hate speech against the Rohingya people, and the company failed to hire moderators and fact-checkers who spoke the local languages and understood the political situation.

One post from September 2017 said, “These non-human Kalar dogs, the Bengalis, are killing and destroying our land, our water and our ethnic people,” using well-known pejoratives for the Rohingya. “ We need to destroy their race.”

In April 2018, another user posted a picture of a boat filled with Rohingya refugees and wrote, “Pour fuel and set fire so that they can meet Allah faster."

The chairman of a United Nations fact-finding mission said Facebook played a “determining role” in the genocide.

Rohingya refugees sued Facebook in early 2022 to the tune of $150 billion for wrongful death, personal injury, pain and suffering, emotional distress and loss of property. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers, a Barack Obama appointee, dismissed the case with prejudice in January, finding that the plaintiff’s claims were barred by the two-year statute of limitations for personal injury claims, which originated in 2012 and 2017 respectively.

Wednesday’s arguments centered on when the deadline clock started to run. The plaintiffs say it wasn’t until 2021, when they found out about Facebook’s involvement in perpetuating the genocide.

One plaintiff claims she could not have known of Facebook’s involvement earlier because she didn’t know how to read or write in English when she fled to, and eventually settled in, the United States.

“California’s discovery rule exists to protect the ‘blamelessly ignorant.’ And I think you’d be hard-pressed to find two more blamelessly ignorant than Jane Doe 1 and 2 here,” Perlstadt said, quoting from Kernan v. Regents.

U.S. Circuit Judge Marsha Berzon appeared concerned by the implications for case law.

“And if the lawyer had come five years later, would that still be the case? There seems to be no stopping point,” the Bill Clinton appointee asked. “That’s the problem.”

U.S. Circuit Judge Ryan D. Nelson was quick to agree. “California could be facing these claims 50 years from now,” said Nelson, a Donald Trump appointee.

Meta argued that the clock started ticking on the case when the plaintiffs entered the country, and that under California case law, people must investigate any wrongdoing they suffer to make a personal injury claim — something the plaintiffs do not claim to have done.

“If you’ve suffered an injury, and you’re aware that there’s a wrongful cause, you have a duty to investigate,” said Kristin A. Linsley of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, who represented Meta.

U.S. Circuit Judge William Fletcher, another Clinton appointee, took issue with that position.

“In a refugee camp, she has an obligation to consult an American lawyer? Yeah, right,” he quipped.

Still, Linsley was adamant.

“The law in California doesn’t have a lower standard if you don’t speak English,” the attorney argued.

Courthouse News contacted attorneys for the plaintiffs and for Meta, but neither responded to a request for comment by press time.

The panel did not indicate when it would issue a ruling.

In 2021, Myanmar’s military forcibly seized control of the country through a coup, jailing democratically elected politicians and violently putting down protestors. The country is currently engaged in a civil war.