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Targeted online ads are a godsend for small businesses -- unless you’re hiring.

A group of job seekers have filed discrimination charges against Facebook and 9 employers.

The individuals are working with the Communications Workers of America and American Civil Liberties Union. They’ve filed charges with the Equal Opportunity Commission.

They allege employers used Facebook Ad targeting to exclude women from seeing job ads.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids employers and employment agencies from discriminating based on gender and other factors.

Debra Katz, a lawyer not affiliated with the case, specializes in discrimination. She told the New York Times that Facebook’s job application system makes it like an employment agency.

For our readers who post jobs on Facebook – remember, posting on Facebook isn’t the problem.

The issue is that the businesses allegedly targeted certain jobs to display only to men.

For example, an ad for furniture assemblers by Nebraska Furniture Mart of Texas sought men ages 18-50. According to the ad, the men also needed to live in or have recently been in Fort Worth, TX.

The company could have avoided complaints by making the ad visible to anyone over 18 in Fort Worth. That would have fixed the gender and age-based discrimination claims.

One of the women bringing charges is Bobbi Spees, a mother of 3 with several years of factory experience.

She was seeking a similar manual labor position, but couldn’t find one. Data collected by her legal team suggests it isn’t because the jobs weren’t there. The jobs did exist but were hidden from her.

Local businesses beware. If you advertise your job openings online, make sure you do so fairly.

When choosing who to target, select “all.”