• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, February 13, 2019

Twitter was hit with a potential class-action lawsuit for its decision to ban a user over "misgendering."

The lawsuit, filed Monday by Canadian journalist Megan Murphy, centers on Twitter's “hateful conduct policy,” which includes prohibitions against “misgendering” -- or referring to transgender individuals by their biological gender at birth. Murphy alleges that she was informed by Twitter last November that she had been permanently banned after referring to a transgender woman as a man.

She argues in a class-action complaint brought in San Francisco Superior Court that the ban amounts to a breach of contract between Twitter and users like herself.

“Proclaiming itself 'the free speech wing of the free speech party,' Twitter has grown into an unprecedented public forum for national and global communication,” the complaint states. “Twitter’s repeated representations that it would uphold the free speech rights of its users and not censor user speech were material to the decision of millions of users, like Murphy, to join.”

In 2011, former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo famously referred to the company as the “free speech wing of the free speech party.” But current executives have distanced themselves from that quote.

Murphy says in her complaint that Twitter only banned misgendering last October, and didn't give her 30 days' advance notice of the changes. (Twitter's terms of service say the company will notify users about some revisions at least 30 days before they take effect.)

She is seeking an order prohibiting Twitter from enforcing its policy against misgendering, among other orders.

"In violations of its repeated promises and representations to its users, Murphy and hundreds of other users were targeted for a permanent suspension due to their views on a hotly contested political issue that is now before several legislative bodies worldwide: whether an individual’s gender should be regarded as entirely a matter of one’s personal choice," the lawsuit reads.

A Twitter spokesperson said the company “believes Ms. Murphy's claims are meritless and will vigorously defend itself against this suit."

Murphy isn't the first one to sue Twitter over a ban. In the past, Twitter has prevailed in similar disputes. In one well-publicized example, a state appellate court in California ruled that white nationalist Jared Taylor couldn't proceed with a lawsuit alleging that he was wrongly banned from Twitter. The judges on that court said the federal Communications Decency Act protects Twitter from lawsuits over decisions about what content to allow on the service.