August 20, 2026, 21:43 GMT | Insight
With the addictive-design trial between
Meta Platforms and 29 states suspended in Oakland, California, due to an ill juror, lawyers for Meta and the states battled over the company's proposed limitations to the testimony of Jason Sattizahn, a former researcher and whistleblower who has testified in trials against Meta in New Mexico and Tennessee. "They are so intent on hiding this information from the public that they are scrubbing it from their internal documents," a lawyer for the State of Colorado told US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.
The addictive-design trial between 29 states and Meta Platforms was suspended Thursday due to a sick juror, but lawyers battled over the states' allegation that Meta is "scrubbing" its records to hide how in-house lawyers improperly pressured internal researchers to change their findings about social media harms.
The trial won't resume until Monday, after the federal court in Oakland, California, got a call before 6 a.m. that one of the eight jurors was too sick to come to court, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers informed lawyers for Meta and the states after she took the bench.
Instead of the jury hearing trial evidence, Gonzalez Rogers presided over a hard-fought hearing to determine what Meta whistleblower Jason Sattizahn can testify to regarding the role of company lawyers in Meta's research. The hearing concluded with a pointed allegation by the states that Meta improperly used attorney-client privilege to conceal changes company lawyers forced in the conclusions of its mental health researchers, and that Meta is now trying to cover that up after the fact.
"They are so intent on hiding this information from the public that they are scrubbing it from their internal documents," Jason Slothouber, a lawyer with the Colorado attorney general, told the judge.
Gonzalez Rogers said she would look into those claims and would speak with US Magistrate Judge Peter Kang in San Francisco, who decided discovery disputes in the case, about whether he feels the states are overreaching on that issue, or whether Meta is underproducing documents that should not be classified as privileged.
Gonzalez Rogers warned the states that to build a foundation in Sattizahn's testimony for the actions of Meta's in-house lawyers they will have to stick to individual instances of interference with Meta researchers. "It has to be specific. The general approach of trying to impugn the entire process is inappropriate," she told Slothouber.
Gonzalez Rogers also said, however, that in one instance she reviewed, a Meta lawyer got it wrong in claiming their interaction with a researcher was privileged.
A good faith presumption "may protect that lawyer from sanctions, but it does not create a privilege where one does not exist," the judge said, adding that the unnamed Meta lawyer should "go take an ethics course."
— Sattizahn testimony in previous trials —
The role of Meta's in-house lawyers in manipulating the company's internal research about social media harms to shield it from legal scrutiny has been a key issue in earlier trials this year.
This is the first addictive-design trial against Meta in a US federal court, however, where law shaped by the
US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, not state-level appellate courts, will decide issues such as attorney-client privilege.
Meta said in a court filing earlier this week (see
here) that the testimony the states are trying get from Sattizahn "confirms that they intend to question him about documents and statements by Meta's in-house counsel conveying legal advice." Meta said Gonzalez Rogers should follow the reasoning of a California Superior Court judge who ruled that the plaintiffs in the addictive design trial against Meta and
YouTube in Los Angeles could not pursue that line of questioning with Sattizahn.
"An advance order preventing the AGs from asking about Meta's privileged communications, and precluding Sattizahn from volunteering such testimony, is crucial to set the parameters for his testimony," Meta said in the filing.
The states countered in a filing Tuesday (see
here) that Sattizahn "will testify that Meta embedded lawyers in its research process."
Redacted from the filing were details of what those embedded in-house Meta lawyers allegedly did. While attorney-client privilege protects legal communications, "it does not hide underlying business conduct simply because lawyers participated," the states told Gonzalez Rogers in the filing.
Sattizahn testified in Congress in 2025 that Meta "roll[ed] out new processes and policies to manipulate, control, and erase data," and he should be allowed to provide similar testimony in Oakland, the states told the judge.
The whistleblower didn't testify in the Los Angeles trial after Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl limited his testimony. But he did take the witness stand in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in that state's trial against Meta, which ended with a $942 million financial penalty against Meta and a court order that it make significant changes in the operation of Facebook and
Instagram (see
here).
Sattizahn, a safety researcher in Meta's virtual reality division, testified in February that he was assigned a company lawyer, Kristin Zobel, who was present "at every single stage of research" (see
here).
"That lawyer was going to have the final word on how those things work," Sattizahn told the jury in New Mexico. "I basically had this attorney, this Big Brother, that at every step of the way was saying, 'you have to do research this way.'"
Sattizahn also testified Aug. 11 in Tennessee's trial against Meta (see
here), saying that the social media giant asked him during a trip to Germany to delete data from surveys with families about child sexual exploitation.
"It was on that trip in Germany, literally in my hotel room, that I began downloading documents to provide to oversight to Congress," Sattizahn told the Tennessee jury.
— No quagmire —
Witness testimony in Oakland began this week with Arturo Bejar, a former director of engineering at Meta turned child-safety advocate, taking the stand. Gonzalez Rogers noted Thursday that Bejar never testified that a Meta lawyer pressured him to change his research findings.
"I didn't hear Mr. Bejar say his research, that someone asked him to change it," Gonzalez Rogers said. "If he could identify changes to the research, and the fact that a Meta lawyer made him do it," that would not be protected by attorney-client privilege.
Sattizahn worked for Meta from 2018 until early 2022, doing research for Facebook Marketplace, Facebook Faith and Facebook Live Shopping. Following that, he worked until April 2024 for Meta's Reality Labs division, which develops virtual reality headsets and other products.
"He wasn't there for that long and he is not a high-level employee," Gonzalez Rogers said of Sattizahn's resume. As a result, she said, any testimony by Sattizahn in Oakland cannot make broad, across-the-board assertions about Meta policies for determining which documents are privileged.
"We are not going to enter into a quagmire based on broad-based assertions without specifics in front of me. So no, he cannot talk about that," Gonzalez Rogers told lawyers for the states. "These are bells that can't be unrung. And you don't have any control over this person."
Slothouber said Meta is preventing the states from learning who at Meta had access to specific documents. "It's created a very serious imbalance in the ability to admit evidence in this case, and it's purely being done by the defense for tactical advantage," he told the judge.
That's "absolutely false," retorted Meta lawyer Ashley Simonsen.
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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