Court allows Facebook moderators’ case against Meta to proceed
The company further argued that the court has no jurisdiction over a foreign entity, since the Kenyan Constitution does not apply outside Kenya's borders.
The Employment and Labour Relations Court has refused to suspend the hearing of a case in which 186 content moderators sued Facebook's parent company, Meta, and its agent for firing them, despite a pending petition at the Supreme Court.
Justice Mathews Nduma issued the decree on Tuesday after Meta Platforms and Samsource EPZ moved the case to the Supreme Court following the dismissal of their appeal by the Court of Appeal in September 2024.
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Meta and Samsource are contesting the jurisdiction of Kenyan courts to issue a judgment on the matter.
However, Nduma declined to suspend the proceedings on the grounds that the court lacked the capacity to weigh in on matters decided by the Court of Appeal, ruling that the case should proceed as scheduled.
"Accordingly, having considered the circumstances of this case, the application is misconceived and an attempt to clothe this court with a mandate it clearly does not have and whose only recourse from the judgment of the Court of Appeal is to hear and determine the petition pending before it," said Justice Nduma.
He added that the hearing of the 2023 petition should proceed in the interest of justice and fairness. Meta had argued that the matter raised constitutional issues best left to the Supreme Court and insisted that the Kenyan courts lacked jurisdiction since the company is not based in Kenya.
Meta added that as a foreign company with no operations in Kenya, it faced the risk of paying Sh10 million to moderators who are not its employees.
The company further argued that the court has no jurisdiction over a foreign entity, since the Kenyan Constitution does not apply outside Kenya's borders.
On March 20, 2023, Justice Nduma allowed the workers to serve Facebook's owners in the USA. But later, the Court of Appeal rejected this, saying the labour court has the right to handle the case because the threat to lay off content moderators affects Kenya directly.
The moderators, through their lawyer Mercy Mutemi, said Meta and its former partner, Samasource Kenya EPZ, started a layoff plan to punish them after a complaint by South African Daniel Motaung about bad working conditions.
Mutemi also argued Meta does business in Kenya since millions of Kenyans use Facebook, and it earns money from Facebook Pay and Facebook Marketplace.
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