An actress in an anti-Muslim film, who later faced death threats because of her unwitting participation in the project, can enforce a preliminary injunction ordering YouTube to remove the film, an appeals court has ruled.

“While answering a casting call for a low-budget amateur film doesn't often lead to stardom, it also rarely turns an aspiring actress into the subject of a fatwa,” a Muslim religious or legal judgment. “But that's exactly what happened to Cindy Lee Garcia when she agreed to act in a film with the working title 'Desert Warrior,' ” the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday in Cindy Lee Garcia v. Google Inc. et al.

The film's writer and producer, Mark Basseley Youssef, who also is the defendant in the litigation, cast Ms. Garcia in a minor role for which she was paid $500 for about three-and-half days of filming, according to the ruling.

But the movie never materialized. Instead, Ms. Garcia's scene was used in an anti-Islamic film, “Innocence of Muslims,” which later was uploaded to YouTube L.L.C., a unit of Mountain View, Calif.-based Google.

Ms. Garcia then discovered her performance had been partially dubbed over so she appeared to be asking, “Is your Mohammed a child molester?” according to court records.

“These, of course, are fighting words to many faithful Muslims, and after the film aired on Egyptian television, there were protests that generated worldwide news coverage,” and an Egyptian cleric issued a fatwa, calling for killing of everyone involved in the film.

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Ms. Garcia soon began receiving death threats. She responded by taking security precautions, including asking Google to remove the video from YouTube.

Ms. Garcia filed eight takedown notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. When Google refused to act, she sought a temporary restraining order, arguing that its posting infringed her copyright in her performance.

A federal judge in Seattle treated the request as a preliminary injunction, and denied on grounds including that she delayed bringing the action, the requested relief would not prevent harm and that it was unlikely to succeed on its merits.

However, in its ruling Wednesday, the 9th Circuit panel disagreed. In its 2-1 ruling, the court said “the harm Garcia complains of is real and immediate.”

“She has provided unrefuted evidence that the threats against her are ongoing and serious, she has already been forced to take significant security precautions when traveling and she has moved to a new home and relocated her business as a safety measure,” the appeals court said.

“Youssef's unauthorized inclusion of her performance in 'Innocence of Muslims' undisputedly led to the threats against Garcia,” the court ruled.

While Google argued that any harm arose out of her participation in the film rather than its posting on YouTube, “Garcia has shown that removing the film from YouTube will help disassociate her from the film's anti-Islamic message and that such disassociation will keep her from suffering future threats and physical harm,” the court ruled in granting the preliminary injunction against the “prominent online platform.”