Facebook has been dragged into a racial discrimination case involving three Queensland university students.

On Monday federal circuit court judge Michael Jarrett ordered the social media giant be subpoenaed for information on the account details of a Queensland University of Technology student accused of making a racist comment online.

He ordered the subpoena be sent to Facebook’s international headquarters in Dublin, along with €100 to cover international postage fees.

Calum Thwaites has denied being responsible for a two-word racist post among a 2013 Facebook thread about three students being asked to leave an Indigenous-only computer lab.

He claims a post was not written by him and came from a fake account.

Thwaites is being sued for $250,000 alongside fellow students Alex Wood and Jackson Powell by Cindy Prior, the indigenous administration officer who asked the students to leave.

Wood has not denied posting “Just got kicked out of the unsigned indigenous computer room. QUT (is) stopping segregation with segregation?” on Facebook after being asked to leave the lab and Powell has admitted writing “I wonder where the white supremacist lab is?”

However, both deny their posts were racist.

Barrister Susan Anderson, representing Prior, told the court Facebook should be asked to provide details about Thwaites’s accounts.

Anderson said the information from Facebook, providing it still had it, would probably be able to answer whether Thwaites was behind the post.

Tony Morris QC said although his client, Thwaites, would be “delighted” to be proved right, the application to subpoena the documents was futile and would only “muddy the waters” of the case.

Jarrett will publish his reasons for allowing the subpoena in the coming days.

Lawyers representing the trio have called for the matter to be dismissed, however Jarrett is yet to deliver his judgment on that application.