A US appeals court has ruled that Meta Platfoms, Google, TikTok and Snapchat must face thousands of lawsuits alleging that their platforms were designed to be addictive for young users. According to a report by Reuters, the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court has rejected an appeal made by Meta and TikTok in which the companies speed to to overturn a lower court’s decision which allowed more than 3,000 federal cases to proceed. The social media giants also argued that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which offer shields to online platforms from liability for user content should also protect them from claims that their designs encourage addiction. The 9th Circuit disagreed with the framing entirely, ruling that Section 230 offers a defense against liability rather than outright immunity from being sued, which meant the appeal came too early in the process.
Meta also loses bid to delay multistate trial
The court also denied Meta’s request to delay a multistate trial brought by 29 state attorneys general, who allege the company illegally collected children’s data, designed its platforms to keep young users hooked, and misled consumers about safety. The trial is set to begin Wednesday.The decision follows a New Mexico court ruling last week that found Meta had created a public nuisance and ordered it to pay $567 million into a teen mental health fund and implement youth-safety measures.
Part of a mounting legal pattern
Monday’s ruling lands just days after a New Mexico judge found that Meta had created a public nuisance in the state, ordering the company to pay $567 million into a teen mental health fund and to implement youth-safety measures. That followed an earlier phase of the same trial in which a jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million after finding it had misled consumers about the safety of its platforms.The federal cases now cleared to move forward are centralized before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, and seek damages, penalties and restitution. They stem from Rogers’ 2023 and 2024 orders that largely allowed the litigation to proceed, orders the companies had been appealing ever since. Attorneys Lexi Hazam and Previn Warren, who represent thousands of school districts and individuals in the federal litigation, said the ruling clears the way not only for the states’ trial but also for a separate trial over school district claims scheduled for February.Beyond the federal cases, the companies also face hundreds of additional lawsuits in state courts, including roughly 3,300 consolidated in a single proceeding in California state court. In the first such case to reach a verdict, a Los Angeles jury in March found Meta and Google negligent for designing platforms that harmed young users, awarding $6 million to a young woman who said she became addicted to Instagram and YouTube as a child — a closely watched early indicator of how juries may respond to similar claims going forward.