Another judge says social media companies must face claims of targeting minors

In a big win for plaintiffs accusing Meta, Google and other social media platforms of targeting and damaging young users, a federal judge in Oakland rejected Tuesday the companies’ bid to dismiss the cases.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled against defense arguments that the entire case should be dismissed on the grounds that the lawsuit violated the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. In re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation, 22-MD-03047 (N.D. Cal., filed Oct. 6, 2022).

Social media companies have often successfully cited Section 230 to block lawsuits involving the posting of third-party content.

The decision is consistent with an Oct. 13 ruling by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl, who allowed plaintiffs in a state case to sue social media companies for negligence. Social Media Cases, JCCP 5255 (Los Angeles Co. Sup. Ct., filed Dec. 30, 2022).

Plaintiffs’ attorneys hailed the ruling, while social media companies decried it.

“Today’s decision is a significant victory for the families that have been harmed by the dangers of social media. The court’s ruling repudiates Big Tech’s overbroad and incorrect claim that Section 230 or the First Amendment should grant them blanket immunity for the harm they cause to their users,” wrote plaintiffs’ attorneys with Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP, Motley Rice LLC and Seeger Weiss LLP.

“The mental health crisis among American youth is a direct result of these defendants’ intentional design of harmful product features,” they added.

Google spokesman Jose Castaneda wrote, “The allegations in these complaints are simply not true.”

“Protecting kids across our platforms has always been core to our work,” he added. “In collaboration with child development specialists, we have built age-appropriate experiences for kids and families on YouTube, and provide parents with robust controls.”

The judge, an appointee of President Barack Obama, wrote that neither side’s “all or nothing” approach to Section 230 is persuasive. She broke down the various claims and concluded that application of the federal law is “more nuanced.”

She cited a host of 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and district court opinions to support her ruling, which grants parts of the defendants’ motions to dismiss but denies most others.

For example, Gonzalez Rogers wrote that Section 230 does not protect the companies — including Snap Inc. — from allegations that they failed to provide “effective parental controls including notification to parents that children are using the platforms” or not using “robust age verification.”

“Defendants’ assertion that other courts have found age verification targeted claims barred by Section 230 does not persuade,” the judge wrote. “Those cases are not controlling, and further, are consistent with this court’s position.”

But she rejected the plaintiffs’ product defect claims, concluding that “protective limits to the length and frequency of [social media] sessions” and other restrictions “would necessarily require defendants to publish less third-party content.”

Section 230 also does not protect the defendants from plaintiffs’ allegations that they violated two federal statutes, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, known as COPPA, and the Protect Our Children Act.

Gonzalez Rogers made short work of the defendants’ First Amendment defenses.

“Defendants broadly assert that the First Amendment entirely bars plaintiffs’ claims in that it ‘precludes tort liability for protected speech, including choices about presenting and disseminating content,’” she wrote.

“As discussed, myriad allegations do not seek to hold defendants liable for protected speech,” the judge added. “Defendants’ all or nothing approach therefore fails.”

Paul R. Kiesel of Kiesel Law LLP in Beverly Hills, a plaintiffs’ attorney in the California case, said in a phone interview he is “looking forward to coordinating discovery together” with plaintiffs’ lawyers in the federal case.