Social Media Lawsuits: The Four Cases Reshaping Big Tech

Meta has now lost two jury trials in five days. On March 24, 2026, a New Mexico jury ordered the company to pay $375 million for misleading the public about child safety on Facebook and Instagram. A day later, a Los Angeles jury hit Meta and Google’s YouTube with a $6 million verdict in the first case to treat social media apps as defective products engineered to hook children. Together they mark the opening of a reckoning that lawyers on both sides have been warning about for years.

The four biggest social media lawsuits now on the US docket are the ones to watch. A coalition of more than 1,000 California school districts is pushing a federal case toward trial in June. Twenty-nine state attorneys general are waiting for their own day in a Meta courtroom over children’s data. A teenage sexual-assault survivor in California has Roblox and Discord tied up at the appeals gate. And an Australian mining billionaire is asking a federal judge to chip away at the platform liability shield that has defined American internet law for thirty years. According to Adam J. Schwartz, a lawyer who founded an online document review tool and has tracked the litigation closely, the pending cases “are the bellwether cases that will set the tone and tenor for shaping the law in the future.”

Two Verdicts in Five Days Reset the Map

The Los Angeles case, known as KGM, is the one that reset the legal map. The jury found Meta and YouTube liable for the depression and anxiety of a young woman from Chico, California, now 20, who said she started watching YouTube at age 6 and joined Instagram at 11. The panel awarded her $3 million in compensatory damages and an additional $3 million in punitive damages, with Meta on the hook for 70% of the total and Google for 30%. It was the first time a jury concluded that social media apps should be treated as defective products for being engineered to exploit the developing brains of children, and the case is a bellwether tied to about 2,000 other pending lawsuits that make similar claims. Five weeks of testimony included appearances by Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. NPR has the full account of the $6M Los Angeles verdict against Meta and YouTube.

One day before the Los Angeles verdict, a New Mexico jury hit Meta with $375 million in civil penalties for violating the state’s Unfair Practices Act. The seven-week trial featured testimony from Arturo Béjar, a former Meta engineering leader who quit in 2021 and returned as a whistleblower, and internal Meta research showing that 16% of all Instagram users had reported being shown unwanted nudity or sexual activity in a single week. The $375 million total was reached after the jury found thousands of violations of the act, each carrying a maximum penalty of $5,000. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said after the verdict that “Meta executives knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew.” The BBC’s full write-up covers Meta’s $375M New Mexico verdict and the seven-week trial.

Meta has said it will appeal both verdicts, and the company is also facing a follow-on ruling in New Mexico on whether it created a public nuisance, with a second phase scheduled for later this year. Los Angeles Superior Court has scheduled a third California state bellwether trial for May 11, 2026.

Stats snapshot

• $375M New Mexico civil penalty
• $6M Los Angeles verdict (Meta 70%, YouTube 30%)
• 2,300+ claims consolidated in the federal MDL
• 1,000+ California school districts suing the platforms
• $5,000 maximum penalty per New Mexico violation

The 2,300-Case Federal Pipeline

Behind the verdicts sits a much larger engine. The Social Media Adolescent Addiction MDL, an abbreviation for multidistrict litigation, has consolidated more than 2,300 claims in the Northern District of California before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. The suits come from families, school districts, and state governments, all arguing that platforms were deliberately designed to foster compulsive use among minors.

The first federal bellwether trial in the MDL is set for June 15, 2026, and will feature claims from a school district – the Breathitt County Board of Education in Kentucky or the Tucson Unified School District in Arizona – accusing Meta, Google, TikTok, and Snap of creating a “public nuisance” and forcing schools to pay for mental-health treatment, tutoring, and special-education services. A second bellwether, brought by a state attorney general, is scheduled for August 6, 2026. AboutLawsuits.com outlines the federal bellwether trial schedule in California.

Snap, YouTube, and TikTok have already settled the first school district case, leaving Meta as the lone holdout. The platforms had asked Judge Rogers to dismiss the negligence and public-nuisance claims; she rejected the motion. YouTube said publicly that “the allegations in these complaints are simply not true,” and a Snapchat spokeswoman said the company “fundamentally disagree[s] with the allegations – we do not target schools.” Meta declined to comment, and TikTok did not respond to a request for comment. Because bellwether verdicts do not bind the rest of the docket, the first rulings will not decide all 2,300 cases, but they will set the price for settlements and the appetite of the remaining plaintiffs.

Four cases at a glance

Twenty-Nine States Take Aim at Meta’s Children Data

In October 2023, attorneys general from twenty-nine states, led by California and Colorado, filed their own case against Meta in federal court in San Francisco. The complaint leans on the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, a federal law enacted in 2000 that bars companies from knowingly collecting personal data from children under 13 without verifiable parental consent. The case is currently before the same judge presiding over the school-district MDL, and Meta has already produced more than 2 million documents in discovery.

Trial is set for August 2026. If the states win, they have asked the court to bar Meta from allowing under-13 users on its platforms, force the deletion of data Meta has already collected from underage users, and restrict how that data is used for ad targeting and AI training. Meta declined to comment on the pending case. A ruling for the states would also pressure TikTok, Snap, and YouTube, all of which face the same statute but none of which are defendants in this particular suit.

Roblox and Discord at the Appeals Gate

The fourth case does not involve Meta at all. In February 2025, the family of a then-13-year-old boy filed suit in San Mateo County Superior Court against Roblox Corporation and Discord, Inc., alleging that their son was groomed and solicited on both platforms by an adult sexual predator who was later arrested for crimes against more than two dozen children. The complaint argues that Roblox, a gaming platform that functions as social media for many of its youngest users, and Discord, the chat service the predator used to reach the boy, were defectively designed and falsely marketed as safe.

The companies asked the court to send the case into private arbitration; the court refused in October 2025, and Roblox and Discord have since appealed to a California Court of Appeal. The trial itself is now on hold until the appellate court rules. If the appeal fails, the case can move toward trial later in 2026, and a loss for the platforms would put age-gating, stranger messaging, and chat-safety rules on the table across the gaming-and-chat industry. If the appeal succeeds, the underlying claims could be forced into private arbitration with no public verdict at all.

Discord declined to comment on the pending litigation. A representative for Roblox did not respond to a request for comment.

A Billionaire’s Bid to Crack Section 230

Forrest v. Meta is the case that could redraw the legal map. The plaintiff is Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, the Australian mining billionaire who founded Fortescue Metals Group.

Forrest filed suit in 2022 after scam ads using his image began circulating on Facebook, luring Australians into fake cryptocurrency investments. He accuses Meta of enabling the fraud, profiting from the ads, and unjustly enriching itself in the process. The case now turns on a question with national reach: whether Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the 1996 law that gives platforms broad immunity for user-generated content, can be used to shield Meta at all.

On June 17, 2024, U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts ruled that Section 230 does not block the case from moving forward. The judge found a factual dispute over whether Meta’s ad systems were neutral tools anyone could use, or whether the systems themselves contributed to the illegal content of the ads. Bloomberg Law has the full account of the Section 230 ruling against Meta in Forrest’s case.

I am prepared to spend whatever it takes to hold Facebook’s Directors and its leaders responsible. I don’t care what it costs. I want to see them in the witness stand explaining their actions.

Forrest said in a statement after the 2024 ruling. If a jury ultimately sides with him on Section 230, the decision would not strike down the law, but it would give plaintiffs a workable theory against platforms that monetize or algorithmically amplify user content. The case is now moving toward trial on the remaining claims, with Meta’s broader Section 230 defense still in play.

Where the Law Stops

The four cases share a single legal trick. Each finds a way to sue a platform without running headlong into Section 230. KGM attacked design, not content. New Mexico leaned on a state consumer-protection statute. The COPPA case invokes a federal children’s-privacy law. The Roblox suit targets product design and marketing. Forrest attacks the ad system itself.

What the cases do not yet reach is the much larger universe of platform harm: algorithmic radicalization, deepfake non-consensual imagery, livestreamed abuse that the platforms do not host but help distribute. Schwartz called the four pending cases “the bellwether cases that will set the tone and tenor for shaping the law in the future.” Alexis Shore Ingber, a communications law expert and professor at Syracuse University, said in an interview that the moment amounts to an “inflection point.” The pipeline is open. The structural shift has not arrived.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did the juries in California and New Mexico find in 2026?

A Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google’s YouTube liable on March 25, 2026 for the depression and anxiety of a young woman who said she became addicted to Instagram and YouTube as a child, awarding her $6 million in combined compensatory and punitive damages. One day earlier, a New Mexico jury hit Meta with $375 million in civil penalties for violating the state’s Unfair Practices Act by misleading the public about child safety. Both companies have said they will appeal.

What is the Social Media Adolescent Addiction MDL?

The Social Media Adolescent Addiction MDL is a federal multidistrict litigation pending in the Northern District of California before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. It consolidates more than 2,300 claims brought by families, school districts, and state governments against Meta, Google, TikTok, and Snap, all alleging that the platforms were designed to foster compulsive use among minors. The first bellwether trial is scheduled for June 15, 2026, with a second bellwether on August 6, 2026.

Why are 29 states suing Meta under COPPA?

In October 2023, attorneys general from twenty-nine states, led by California and Colorado, sued Meta in federal court alleging that the company violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, a federal law enacted in 2000 that bars companies from collecting personal data from children under 13 without verifiable parental consent. The states want Meta barred from allowing under-13 users on its platforms, want the company to delete data it has already collected from underage users, and want restrictions on how that data is used.

What is the status of the Roblox and Discord lawsuit?

The case, brought by the family of a then-13-year-old boy in San Mateo County Superior Court in February 2025, alleges that the boy was groomed on Roblox and Discord by a predator who was later arrested. Roblox and Discord asked the court to send the case into private arbitration; the court refused in October 2025, and the companies have appealed. The trial is on hold while the California Court of Appeal considers the arbitration question.

How is Section 230 being challenged in the Forrest case?

Forrest v. Meta, brought by Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest, asks the court to find that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act does not shield Meta from liability for scam cryptocurrency ads that used Forrest’s image on Facebook. On June 17, 2024, U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts ruled that Section 230 does not block the suit from moving forward, and the case is now heading toward trial on the remaining claims.