Meta’s Attempt to Toss AGs’ Child Harm Suit Faces Doubtful Judge

Meta Platforms Inc. may have to face a wide-ranging lawsuit from dozens states’ attorneys general alleging Facebook and Instagram harm children and violate federal privacy law after a federal judge Friday appeared skeptical about dismissing the dispute.

During a hearing in Oakland, Calif., US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers indicated she might allow the state AGs to advance at least some claims against the social media giant, including violations of the Child Online Privacy Protection Act, unfair business practices, and misrepresentations.

Rogers reiterated frequently that at this early stage of the case the state law enforcement agencies only need to meet a low bar to survive Meta’s motion to dismiss.

“The lens with which the court views the argument is, is it plausible?” Rogers asked of the claims in the complaint, which was brought by 33 state AGs in October 2023.

The legal scrutiny of Meta comes largely from 2021 revelations by former Meta employee Frances Haugen, who claimed the company knew that its social media products were harming youth mental health. The AGs’ lawsuit alleged that Meta used powerful algorithms to ensnare and addict teens in the name of profit.

During the nearly five-hour long hearing, Rogers appeared skeptical of Meta’s argument that the mental health harms alleged by the state AGs weren’t a concrete and substantial injury needed to prove a unfair business practices claim. An eating disorder, for example, is a concrete harm, she said.

“We don’t diminish the significance of the allegations,” but there is not a single case where emotional harms can give rise to an unfair business practices claim, which need a concrete monetary harm, said Meta’s attorney Timothy Hester of Covington & Burling LLP.

“An eating disorder is not an emotional harm,” Rogers said in response. “How is it a subjective harm if there is a medical classification for it?”

“It costs money to have psychologists, it costs money to go to the doctor to deal with eating disorders,” Rogers continued. “All of that costs money. All of that is real harm.”

The judge, known for her stern courtroom demeanor, also appeared doubtful of Meta’s argument that the states’ AGs’ consumer protection claims should be dismissed because the use of a free online platform is not a “consumer transaction.”

“It’s just an interesting use to the term free. It somehow suggests that they’re not making money,” Rogers said. “Data has value, you understand that right?”

Some questions about whether Meta violated COPPA, the 1998 federal law prohibiting platforms from collecting data on children without parental consent, appear to be factual disputes which can’t be decided at this early stage of the case, Rogers noted.

It was unclear exactly how the judge would rule on Meta’s defense under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a law blocking lawsuits against platforms based on user-generated content. But Rogers hinted that she may analyze how Section 230 applies to individual features of Meta products, such as infinite scroll and the display of “like” counts, an approach she has taken in the past.

Rogers, who sits on the US District Court for the Northern District of California, is overseeing the case alongside hundreds of similar, consolidated youth addiction and mental health harm lawsuits brought by individual plaintiffs against Meta, TikTok Inc., Google LLC’s YouTube, and Snap Inc.

Rogers allowed parts of those consolidated personal injury lawsuits to advance in an opinion last year. She dismissed Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a defendant in the consolidated personal injury cases this week.

The case is In Re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Pers. Inj. Products Liab. Litigation, N.D. Cal., No. 4:22-md-03047, 4/19/24.