One of the profound questions of our time – is a campaign of personal harassment on social media Free Speech or just plain common or garden personal harassment?

A lawsuit accusing the publisher of the neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer of coordinating a “terror campaign” of online harassment against a Jewish real estate agent cannot be dismissed on First Amendment grounds, a federal judge in Montana ruled this week.

In his ruling denying a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, Dana L. Christensen, the chief judge for United States District Court in Missoula, Mont., wrote that the real estate agent, Tanya Gersh, was a private citizen, not a public figure, and that the publisher, Andrew Anglin, incited his followers to harass her as part of a personal campaign.

It started with interactions between Gersh and Richard Spencer’s mother.

Ms. Spencer owned a building in Whitefish and Ms. Gersh had talked to her about its potential sale after word circulated that residents were considering a protest there against white supremacy.

The call to protest was spurred by video of Mr. Spencer, who resided part time in Whitefish, railing against Jews and shouting “Hail Trump! Hail our people!” at an alt-right meeting in Washington, according to the suit.

The suit contends that Ms. Gersh counseled Ms. Spencer to sell the building and repudiate her son’s views. And initially, Ms. Spencer agreed, it says, even asking Ms. Gersh to represent her in such a sale.

Then Spencer changed her mind and wrote a blog post saying Gersh had threatened her.

Mr. Anglin then began writing and publishing his own articles calling for “a troll storm” against Ms. Gersh.

“Tell them you are sickened by their Jew agenda to attack and harm the mother of someone whom they disagree with,” he wrote, according to the suit.

In the months that followed, the site published over 30 related posts — and the phone numbers, email addresses and social media profiles of Ms. Gersh, her husband and 12-year-old son, as well as friends and colleagues, the suit states.

By the spring of 2017, the family had received more than 700 vulgar and hateful messages, including death threats, many referencing the Holocaust. Some phone messages consisted solely of the sound of gunshots.

The Southern Poverty Law Center filed the lawsuit on Ms. Gersh’s behalf in April 2017.

Anglin has been trying to get it dismissed because Free Speech.

The organization now expects the civil case to go to trial. It has taken a long time because it proved impossible to serve Mr. Anglin with legal papers, Mr. Dinielli said. Mr. Anglin’s last known address was in Ohio, but his whereabouts have been unknown for nearly two years. He is still running the site, possibly from overseas.

His lawyer, Marc Randazza, said that Judge Christensen’s decision was dangerous for free speech.

“The rule we lay down for the Nazi applies equally to the civil rights activist,” Mr. Randazza said in a statement. “And that ruling, if it stands, is not going to be good for anyone who engages in common outrage culture. Maybe that’s a good thing, but I think not.”

No, that’s fine. If a civil rights activist is personally persecuting a random person, including by publishing the phone numbers, email addresses and social media profiles of random person and r.p.’s family, friends, and colleagues, then no, that’s not protected free speech nor is it political activism, it’s targeted persecution.

This isn’t Daily Stormer’s first rodeo.

The site has also faced two other lawsuits. Taylor Dumpson, the first black woman to serve as American University’s student government president, filed a suit in May. She became an online target after a real-life incident: nooses and hateful messages left on campus a day after her inauguration. The suit was filed by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Dean Obeidallah, a Muslim comedian and radio host, filed a defamation lawsuit in August 2017 after the site falsely accused him of masterminding the deadly bombing of an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, last year.

If they can ever find Anglin to force him to pay up, Obeidallah plans to send the money to civil rights groups.