• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, April 6, 2011

When Michigan politico Majed Moughni unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives last year, he used his personal Facebook page to campaign. He garnered a total of 1,600 friends, a number he says was increasing at a rate of 20 to 30 a day, when Facebook abruptly terminated his account.

Moughni says that Facebook never offered an adequate reason for its actions. Nonetheless, he speculates both that the account was terminated because he had too many friend requests and also because his page was the subject of complaints by supporters of the incumbent, Rep. John Dingell. (Moughni's page was later restored.)

Moughni is now suing Facebook for allegedly violating his constitutional right to free speech and due process of law by canceling his account and then "ignoring" his emails about the matter. The case, initially filed in state court in Michigan, was transferred to federal court on Friday.

While Moughni might have cause to feel aggrieved, his legal theories are confused at best. The constitution prevents the government from censoring speech, but private companies like Facebook are free to publish or reject whatever they wish. Likewise, people are entitled to due process of law from the government, not from private corporations.

Nonetheless, even if Facebook can get this case tossed relatively quickly, the social networking service still appears to have a problem. Currently the site is facing at least three other lawsuits by users who think they were treated unfairly. Staten Island resident Mustafa Fteja, who is Muslim, alleges in a lawsuit that Facebook threw him off the site based on his religion. Additionally, Web user Karen Beth Young, who has bipolar disorder, argues that Facebook violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by closing her account. And a spa in Albany, Complexions, filed suit earlier this year, alleging that its page was wrongly removed by Facebook in response to a bogus trademark complaint.

Facebook isn't the only large company to face litigation stemming from decisions to remove material. Google also has been sued by entities who claim they were wrongly booted from the search results. Google easily won the first such case, a lawsuit by Kinderstart, a directory site geared at parents of young children. That lawsuit, however, sparked arguments about whether Google should be regulated as a public utility, given its increasing importance to how people access information.

Today, Google is facing a legal battle in Ohio, where a company, MyTriggers.com, alleges that Google violated state antitrust law when it removed MyTriggers from the organic results (and also lowered MyTriggers' quality score, resulting in higher ad prices). That case has drawn the attention of the Ohio attorney general, who filed papers asking the judge to reject Google's request to dismiss the case.

For now, Facebook probably doesn't have to worry about antitrust claims from booted users. But given the company's size, and its increasing importance as a communications tool, it can probably expect a lot more lawsuits like the one filed by Moughni.