Blogger sues Twitter over ban on tweets about transgender people

A Canadian gender-politics blogger has filed a lawsuit against Twitter after the microblogging site banned her for tweets criticising the rights of transgender people, the media reported.

According to a report in CNET on Tuesday, Meghan Murphy, founder of the blog Feminist Current, filed the lawsuit on Monday in the Superior Court of California.

Twitter permanently booted Murphy from the platform in November for violating the site’s rules against hateful conduct after she

Twitter permanently booted Murphy from the platform in Nov for violating rules against hateful conduct after she made a reference to a transgender woman as “him”.

made a reference to a transgender woman as “him”.

This did not go down well with Twitter which updated its policy on hateful conduct late last year.

The new Twitter policy prohibits targeting individuals with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanise, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category. This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.

Murphy alleged changing the hateful conduct policy without alerting the public amounted to violation of Twitter’s agreement with users. Twitter called the lawsuit “meritless” and added it “will vigorously defend itself against this suit”, said the report. Twitter believes some groups of people, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, are disproportionately targeted with abuse online and so need extra protection.