[danso]

From my interpretation, it's not so much a legal worry as it is a statement of company beliefs -- for starters, according to the reproduced slides, religion is not a protected category for Facebook, even though it enjoys federal protections, while gender identity is, even though there's no federal law. Additionally those legal protections are for certain categories. Age has federal protections when it comes to employment, but not for housing.

None of those statuses enjoy special protection when it comes to free speech, so FB is making its own decisions here. In the slide titled "Subsets", you see a rough algorithm that censors are supposed to use:

PC + PC = PC (protected class, I assume)

PC + NPC = NPC (non-protected class)

Irish women = PC

Irish teens = NPC

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These guidelines presumably help censors have a quick test to tell between hate speech and controversial speech, so that posting a Chris Rock stand-up segment won't get you banned. It's obviously imperfect and in flux. The slides note that migrants became a "quasi protected category" after the Syrian refugee crisis "triggered a global conversation around the role Facebook plays in protecting migrants"