Public nuisance claims against Meta over child addiction advance

(CN) — A federal judge on Friday mostly allowed school districts and local governments to proceed with their public nuisance claims against Meta — the owner of Facebook and Instagram — and other social media companies they say have designed their sites so that young users become addicted to them.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland denied Meta’s and the other companies’ motion to dismiss the nuisance claims except if they were brought under the laws of four states — Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island and South Carolina — where supreme courts have been reluctant to extent public nuisance doctrine beyond traditional land-use contexts.

It’s the fourth ruling on the social media juggernauts’ bid to trim the massive, consolidated litigation by personal injury plaintiffs, state attorney generals, school districts and local governments who claim that the social media platforms are designed to hook children, because that’s what drives the companies’ profits, and are the cause of a youth mental health crisis.

In previous rulings, Gonzalez Rogers allowed school districts to proceed with their negligence claims, insofar as they weren’t barred by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. She also advanced the claims by 34 states under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, also with the same provision for Section 230, which shields online businesses, including social media platforms, from liability for content posted by users.

Alphabet Inc., the owner of Google and YouTube, Snap Inc., the owner of Snapchat, and ByteDance Ltd., the owner of TikTok, are also defendants in the multidistrict proceedings before Gonzalez Rogers.

The public nuisance claims against the social media platforms mirror those brought by school districts and local governments against makers and distributors of opioids where they sought damages for having to address the addiction crisis caused by these companies’ part in the profit-driven over-prescription of those drugs.

“Addictive social media platforms have significantly disrupted the learning environment for our children, forcing schools, teachers, and administrators to address the fallout on youth mental health," said Lexi Hazam of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein and Previn Warren of Motley Rice – court-appointed lead plaintiffs’ counsel in the litigation. “We will press ahead with our claims on behalf of school districts across the country and will not relent until Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, and Google are held accountable for knowingly designing their platforms to exploit young users for profit.”

Gonzalez Rogers rejected the media companies’ argument that their purported conduct doesn’t interfere with the school districts’ own exercise of public rights, which is a necessary element of a public nuisance claim, but only with that of the students.

“Every court that has held that school districts can bring public nuisance claims goes against defendants’ proposition,” the judge said. “It is enough that the defendants’ conduct interferes with a public right and that the plaintiffs’ injuries flows as a direct consequence of that interference.”

School districts and local governments from across the country argue in their master complaint filed last year that they are on the front lines of redressing the damage caused by what they say is the social media companies’ deliberate choice to design, develop and market their platforms to attract and addict youth.

“As a result of defendants’ conduct, public school districts have been forced into a constant struggle for students’ attention, as well as a constant struggle to provide the social, emotional, mental health, and learning support they need,” they claim.

“From addressing the use of defendants’ platforms during class, in violation of school policy, to increased need for anxiety and depression counseling, the plaintiff school districts have devoted substantial resources to combatting students’ addiction to social media and the many resulting harms,” they claim. “School districts have even needed to revise lesson plans and teaching methods to account for the unique way that this social-media generation thinks, including reduced attention spans and reduced capacity for critical thinking.”

The school districts say that they are the primary providers of mental health services to youth and that responding to the mental health crisis they claim is caused by the social media companies is stealing resources from their primary objective of educating youth in a safe and healthy environment.

“We respectfully disagree with the court’s decision, which runs contrary to the ruling in the California state proceedings (JCCP) that the school districts cannot expand the law to create legal claims where none exist," a Meta spokesperson said in response to the judge’s ruling. “We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously against these claims and believe the evidence will demonstrate our commitment to supporting young people.”

In their joint lawsuit filed last year, 33 states including California claim that Meta built a business model focused on maximizing young users’ time on its platforms and employed psychologically manipulative platform features. They accuse the social media giant of publishing reports purporting to show misleadingly low rates of user harms and say it refused to address existing harms to users to conceal and downplay its platforms’ adverse effects.

The social media giants are also fighting a similar consolidated case in Los Angeles County Superior Court, where last month they asked to trim more than a thousand lawsuits claiming the apps have fomented an epidemic of teen addiction and depression.

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