August 15, 2026, 00:21 GMT | Comment
It's been a tough year for
Meta Platforms, legally speaking. After two punishing losses over youth safety and social media addiction, it's set to take on its biggest courtroom battle yet against four US state attorneys general.
It’s been a tough year for Meta Platforms, legally speaking. After two punishing courtroom losses over youth safety and social media addiction, the company is now heading into its biggest battle yet: a US federal trial against four state attorneys general over allegations that it designed its platforms to encourage compulsive use by young people while misleading the public about the risks.
The trial opening Aug. 18 in Oakland, California, will be the first bellwether in the federal multistate litigation brought by 29 state attorneys general against Meta, with California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey the first to put their state consumer-protection claims before a jury.
Those four states accuse Meta of engaging in unfair business practices and making deceptive statements about youth safety, the addictiveness of its products and its efforts to keep children under 13 off Facebook and Instagram in violation of their consumer protection laws. The broader coalition also alleges that Meta violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by knowingly collecting and using personal information from children under 13 without parental notice and consent.
The states plan to put 51 alleged misrepresentations before the jury, including statements by senior Meta executives about whether the company marketed to children under 13, whether its products were designed to be addictive and whether it would sacrifice short-term growth to protect users’ wellbeing.
Among the alleged misrepresentations was a statement Meta’s global head of safety, Antigone Davis, made to Congress that the company does not “market to 8-to-12-year-olds because they are not on Instagram.”
The states intend to call Davis to testify live, according to its most recent witness list, which also includes Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri.
Meta’s defense will be that these statements were all accurate at the time. Davis was citing Meta’s formal age-restriction policy, it says in court documents, noting that at the same congressional hearing, Davis acknowledged that children under 13 were using apps that “aren’t designed for them,” and said Meta had removed some 600,000 accounts of under-13 users in the preceding three months.
US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled in June that an advisory jury will weigh whether this statement and many others were deceptive and provide factual findings to inform her ultimate decision on the company’s liability. That jury was chosen earlier this week (see here).
She will separately decide whether Meta violated COPPA, marking the first time COPPA has been litigated at trial. The states say Meta had “actual knowledge” that children under 13 were using its platforms and was also “willfully blind” to their presence, citing internal company memos saying it deprioritized under-13 enforcement because COPPA “incentivizes not knowing.”
They also claim Meta directs its products to children, another key element of COPPA, by hosting and promoting content aimed at kids and using features that appeal strongly to young users, such as likes, animated effects and filters, short form videos and promotions with teen celebrities.
The number of users under the age of 13 on Meta’s services will undoubtedly be a point of contention at trial.
Meta has argued that it cannot reliably determine the total number of under-13 users on Facebook and Instagram because children can, and often do, lie about their ages. The company says it removes underage accounts once it identifies them. “If we detect that someone might be under the age of 13, even if they lied, we kick them off,” Zuckerberg said at a congressional hearing in March 2021.
Meta also strenuously disputes the states’ allegation that its services are directed to children, describing Facebook and Instagram as general audience platforms not designed or intended for kids.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act could factor heavily into this part of the case. The statute, which shields companies from liability for third-party content, didn’t help Meta avoid trial, but can serve as a defense (see here).
Gonzalez Rogers already narrowed the states’ case under Section 230, barring them from imposing liability on Meta for features tied to the publication of third-party content, including its recommendation algorithms, infinite scroll, autoplay and the display of likes. But she has allowed claims based on Meta’s own alleged misrepresentations or other conduct to proceed.
The states’ lawyers say they plan to show the jury several exhibits of content on Instagram and Facebook that they claim demonstrate that aspects of both platforms were directed to children. Meta plans to object, setting up a recurring fight over how far the states can rely on third-party content without running afoul of Section 230.
Roughly $200 billion in potential penalties are on the line, the state’s lawyers noted at a pre-trial hearing this week (see here). They had previously indicated they would seek as much as $1.4 trillion in disgorgement, tied to teens spending at least 30 minutes a day on Instagram and Facebook — an amount Gonzalez Rogers has called “staggering” and unreasonable (see here).
The states may have retreated from that headline-grabbing amount, but they’re also seeking an injunction that could prove more consequential than the monetary award. Their proposed relief would force substantial changes to the platforms, including stricter default protections for users under 18, limits on teen usage and engagement-based recommendations, more aggressive efforts to identify and remove under-13 users and independent audits of Meta’s age-assurance systems.
In a statement sent to MLex, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the coalition is looking forward to trial and portrayed Meta’s unsuccessful pretrial challenges as repeated attempts to avoid accountability. “We are ready to hold Meta accountable for its role in fueling the mental health crisis of American children and look forward to trial. It seems Meta very much does not,” he said.
Meanwhile, Meta said the states are seeking penalties untethered to the evidence and that it cannot tie its claims to concrete harm. "The State AGs may call this a landmark case, but their limited claims are unsubstantiated and their financial demands are vastly disproportionate. The AGs offer no proof anyone in their states was misled, claim benign features like having an additional Instagram account somehow harmed their residents, and attempt to penalize Meta for industry-wide challenges like age verification,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement to MLex. “Rather than sticking to the facts or the law, the states have instead decided to chase an outlandish payout. We stand by our record of creating strong protections for teens, and look forward to making our case in court.”
The stakes in the Oakland trial are particularly high for Meta after a bruising run of youth safety litigation that has already resulted in two courtroom losses this year. In the first case, in Los Angeles, a jury found Meta and Google’s YouTube liable for contributing to a young woman’s mental health problems in the first social media addiction personal injury case to reach trial (see here). And in New Mexico, Meta was ordered to pay nearly $950 million in penalties and abatement following a lengthy trial over harms to young users (see here).
Meta is also defending itself in a separate trial with the state of Tennessee (see here).
Please email editors@mlex.com to contact the editorial staff regarding this story, or to submit the names of lawyers and advisers.
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