Today, the Kenya Court of Appeal has upheld an earlier ruling by the Employment and Labour Relations Court (ELRC) to the effect that Facebook can be sued in Kenya. Meta had argued that the Kenyan court does not have jurisdiction over them.
Mercy Mutemi, an advocate who was part of the suit, stated, “The Court of Appeal has today upheld the Employment Court’s decision that Facebook can be sued in Kenya. The cases by the content moderators against Meta, Sama and Majorel can now proceed.”
This was an appeal by Meta on a ruling by ELRC. The court ruling found that Meta is the principal employer of 184 content moderators. From the onset, Meta responded that Kenya does not have the legal jurisdiction to determine the case given it’s a foreign company.
In the initial suit, the ELRC had ruled in favour of the moderators fired by Sama, Meta’s content reviewer in Kenya. The moderators informed the court that Meta’s transfer of its content moderation contract to Majorel was accompanied by a directive not to hire former Sama employees.
This led to a legal dispute that resulted in a temporary injunction preventing the moderators’ termination and requiring Sama and Meta to extend their contracts until the case is resolved. ELRC also barred Meta from hiring Majorel as the new outsouricing firm. Facebook parent company then decided to appeal this ruling which was today upheld by the higher court.
The lawsuit against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and its associated apps/companies, was initially filed in 2022. The case filer, Daniel Motaung, was motivated to do so once he was fired by Sama sometime in 2019. At the time, his case targeted Facebook and Sama, its subcontractor for the region.
According to Sama, Daniel had been fired for organizing a strike. The strike, ideally, wanted to see the workers become union members. Complainants argued that the American corporation had exploited and abused its content moderators working in Kenya.
