YouTube was hit with a federal lawsuit Tuesday claiming that the company illegally discriminates against African American content creators.

The lawsuit, brought on behalf of YouTubers Kimberly Carleste Newman, Lisa Cabrera, Catherine Jones and Denotra Nicole Lewis, accuses the company of misapplying its restricted mode to videos whose titles or tags included phrases such as "Racial Profiling," "Police Shootings," "Police Brutality" and "Black Lives Matter."

See it first on Legal Radar."Defendants continue to knowingly, intentionally, and systematically block, demonetize, and deny Plaintiffs and other persons similarly situated, their contractual and other legal rights to access YouTube based on the color of their skin or other protected racial traits, rather than the material in their videos," wrote the plaintiffs lawyers at Browne George Ross in a sprawling 103-page complaint, with more than 120 pages of exhibits.

The law firm previously unsuccessfully sued YouTube and Google in 2017 on behalf of Prager University, a nonprofit digital media outfit co-founded by conservative commentator Dennis Prager, claiming that the companies discriminated against videos that offer conservative commentary on current and historical events. Last year, the firm filed suit on behalf of eight LGBTQ+ YouTube creators claiming that content they've uploaded was restricted and demonetized because their video has been deemed by the site's algorithms and moderators as "shocking," "inappropriate," "offensive" or "sexually explicit."

YouTube representatives didn't immediately respond to messages seeking comment Wednesday.

Tuesday's complaint squarely takes aim at Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the federal law that immunizes interactive services such as YouTube from being treated as the publisher or speaker of hosted content created by third parties, or from liability for removing or restricting access to certain types of offensive material. The George Browne Ross lawyers contend that YouTube's lawyers conceded at oral argument on their motion to dismiss the LGBTQ+ plaintiffs' case earlier this month, which is pending before U.S. Magistrate Judge Virginia Demarchi of the Northern District of California, that Section 230 may not protect an internet service provider in a case involving intentional race discrimination.

In the LGBTQ+ case, lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice intervened to defend the Constitutionality of Section 230, arguing that the statute doesn't violate the First Amendment's Speech Clause since YouTube is not a state actor capable of denying the freedom of speech.

In Tuesday's complaint, the plaintiffs lawyers argued that the Justice Department should be foreclosed from making that argument in the latest case, especially in light of the Executive Order issued by President Donald Trump last month, which purported to roll back some Section 230 protections for companies that engage in intentional discrimination based on race, sex or other identity or viewpoint.

"At this time, United States has a potentially unwaivable conflict of interest under the applicable law and ethics rules governing conflicts of interest and divided duty of loyalty," the plaintiffs lawyers wrote in Tuesday's complaint. "If given full legal affect, the Executive Order mandates the obvious: Section 230(c) applies only to filtering and blocking 'offensive material,' not the persons who use the internet," they wrote.

Browne George Ross' Peter Obstler, who led the cases for PragerU and the LGBTQ+ plaintiffs and signed Tuesdays' complaint, didn't immediately respond to a message Wednesday morning.

Read more: 

Ninth Circuit: YouTube May Be Ubiquitous, but That Doesn't Mean It Violated PragerU's First Amendment Rights

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