A federal judge allowed school districts to sue social media sites, including Instagram and TikTok, for expenses they incurred dealing with students who are addicted to their platforms.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who is overseeing the social media addiction multidistrict litigation in the Northern District of California, allowed negligence claims brought by school districts and local governments to move ahead against Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook and Instagram, and the parent companies of TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube.
“Defendants principally contend the school district and local government entities’ alleged injuries are too remote or attenuated for the law to redress,” she wrote in a Thursday opinion. “In most ways, the court disagrees.”
The economic impact on schools of students becoming addicted to social media was foreseeable, she concluded.
Concerns from the social media companies that allowing such claims would create a “limitless pool of potential plaintiffs,” she wrote, is “a dramatic overstatement.”
“Today’s ruling is a significant victory for schools, teachers, and administrators who are on the front lines of the nation’s youth mental health crisis,” wrote co-lead plaintiffs’ counsel Lexi Hazam, of San Francisco’s Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, and Motley Rice’s Previn Warren in Washington, D.C. “Because of the addictive design of Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube, students are struggling. That means schools are struggling—their budgets are stretched and their educational missions are diverted as they shoulder the added responsibility of supporting kids in crisis.”
Montgomery, Alabama-based Beasley Allen, which represents hundreds of school districts, said in a separate statement that expenses for its clients include hiring mental health professionals and resources, and limiting social media use during school hours.
“We are encouraged by Judge Gonzalez Rogers’ decision to allow these important claims to proceed,” said Beasley Allen’s Joseph VanZandt, who is state liaison counsel in the multidistrict litigation. “This ruling affirms the serious nature of the allegations and the need for accountability from these companies.”
A spokesperson said Meta disagreed with Thursday’s ruling.
“We’ve developed numerous tools to support parents and teens, and we recently announced that we’re significantly changing the Instagram experience for tens of millions of teens with new Teen Accounts, a protected experience for teens that automatically limits who can contact them and the content they see,” according to Meta’s statement.
“Providing young people with a safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work,” José Castaneda, a spokesperson for Google, which owns YouTube, said in a separate statement. “In collaboration with youth, mental health and parenting experts, we built services and policies to provide young people with age-appropriate experiences, and parents with robust controls. The allegations in these complaints are simply not true.”
Snapchat parent Snap Inc. referred requests for comment to its website, which, earlier this month, flagged new features that protect teenager users from “bad actors.”
“We take our responsibility to protect teens very seriously,” the company said on its website.
A representative of ByteDance, which owns TikTok, did not respond to a request for comment.
‘The Alleged Injuries Here Are Distinct’
Gonzalez Rogers already issued two prior orders refusing to dismiss other claims against the social media defendants. Last year, the judge allowed some product liability claims relating to design defects by individual plaintiffs to move ahead. And, earlier this month, she green-lighted consumer claims brought by attorneys general in more than 30 states against Meta.
In Thursday’s order, Gonzalez Rogers found that, as in her prior decisions, the school district claims that focused on certain features of the social media sites, such as the age verification process, parental controls and other protective limits, were not barred by the Communications Decency Act’s Section 230, which immunizes tech companies from the actions of third parties, or the First Amendment. Other features, such as algorithms to promote addictive users, are protected, she concluded.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the Northern District of California. Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM
She also found that the injuries to students were not derivative to those against school districts but, in fact, distinct.
“The alleged injuries here are distinct and borne exclusively by the school districts,” she wrote. “Defendants notably do not argue that minor students bear the cost of increased expenditures of healthcare resources at their schools.”
Her ruling did not address separate claims for public nuisance, which would come out in a separate order.
School districts and individual plaintiffs will be the subjects of the first bellwether trials. At a Friday status hearing, Gonzalez Rogers outlined procedures for experts, whose reports are due May 16.
“Causation issues are going to be critical,” she said.
She also said she would have four consecutive bellwether trials, two selected by plaintiffs counsel and two by defense counsel, designed to “stop some of the gamesmanship” that comes in the bellwether process in multidistrict litigation.
“If you start buying people off or dismissing because you didn’t have a good plaintiff, it’s on you,” she said. “But you won’t get your bellwethers at the expense of the other side.”
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content
