c) To make, print, or publish, or cause to be made, printed, or published any notice, statement, or advertisement, with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination.
Note, however, that there’s nothing in the law requiring notices, statements, or advertisements to be delivered or visible to members of protected groups. And that’s not a new phenomenon: when that law was written I could easily have placed an ad in Ebony or postered only white neighborhoods, and as long as the ad itself didn’t indicate a preference, limitation, or discrimination that was legally fine. (More commonly, can you put a “Room for rent” notice on a church community board or is that religious discrimination? Or, in a town with a black newspaper and a daily (as used to be common), can you advertise in the black paper?)
It doesn’t appear, to my non-lawyerly eyes, that this is in fact the law Facebook ran afoul of.
