Private Facebook Group Can Exclude Member–Khan v. ILONCA

The plaintiffs are a husband-wife couple, Khan and Abdulhamid. They are both Muslim and ethnically Middle Eastern. The plaintiffs bought a house in the Island Lake of Novi residential community in suburban Detroit. Halmaghi was the seller’s listing agent. The plaintiffs allege that Halmaghi made various racist remarks during the sales process. The husband posted a negative online review of Halmaghi.

After that, Halmaghi kicked them out of the private Facebook group she administered called “Island Lake of Novi Residents.” The plaintiffs allege several connections between the Island Lake of Novi HOA and the private group, including that the HOA posts official notices there, which the plaintiffs couldn’t access.

The plaintiffs sued the HOA and other defendants. The plaintiffs claimed Fair Housing Act and other anti-discrimination violations. The claims against the HOA fail mostly due to the pleadings’ lack of specificity about the HOA/private group linkages.

As a result, this case becomes a fairly routine lawsuit over online account termination–except at the private group level rather than the server level. Non-governmental group administrators can exclude anyone they want from their groups, just as dozen of cases have established that services can terminate users’ accounts.

For example, the court says the exclusion from the group isn’t sufficiently extreme or outrageous to constitute IIED:

if a physical chase while yelling in the workplace and defamation are not sufficiently outrageous to set forth an IIED claim, then it is a stretch to imagine that exclusion from a Facebook group would qualify under this high bar.

Case dismissed against the HOA.

[Note: Although I support the legal freedom of online group administrators to decide group membership, including account termination as capricious retaliation for a negative online review, I also note the possibility that the plaintiffs’ exclusion was in fact motivated by racism or national origin discrimination, which would not be very neighborly at all. If so, it would be especially troubling to see in a metropolitan like Detroit, which has a very long and sordid history of racism in real property matters].

This case fits into several blog themes:

• The interplay between Internet Law and real estate law. The compare/contrast of real property and virtual property is a cyberlaw classic.
• HOAs are microcosms of community governance and enforcement, for better and for worse. Some other HOA/Internet Law blog posts (1, 2).
• Private Facebook groups are an important part of society but they don’t always get the attention they deserve. Some prior posts about private Facebook groups: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Case Citation: Khan v. Island Lake of Novi Community Association, 2026 WL 1833497 (E.D. Mich. June 25, 2026)