Meta, Facebook & Instagram Regulation and Lawsuits: Verdicts, MDL

Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is fighting an extraordinary volume of litigation and regulatory action centered on claims that its platforms were engineered to addict children and teens. As of mid-2026, two juries have already found the company liable in youth-harm cases, more than 2,400 lawsuits are consolidated in federal court, a coalition of 42 state attorneys general is pursuing its own claims, and European regulators have issued preliminary findings that Meta is in breach of the Digital Services Act. The current wave of Meta lawsuits is being litigated on a legal theory that treats Instagram and Facebook as defective products rather than as publishers of user content, and early rulings suggest that theory is holding.

The Two Verdicts Already on the Board

On March 25, 2026, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury found Meta and Google negligent for the defective design of their platforms and awarded a 20-year-old plaintiff identified as K.G.M. a total of $6 million, split evenly between compensatory and punitive damages. Meta was assigned 70 percent of the award, roughly $4.2 million; Google took the remaining 30 percent.¹

K.G.M. began using YouTube at age 6 and Instagram at age 11. Her attorneys compared the platforms to “digital casinos” and pointed to infinite scroll, autoplaying videos, constant notifications, and beauty filters as choices designed to exploit developing brains. Internal documents shown to jurors included one memo stating, “If we wanna win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens,” and an Instagram employee message reading, “We’re basically pushers … We’re causing reward deficit disorder.”² The jury found both companies acted with “malice or fraud,” which supported the punitive award. Snapchat and TikTok settled with K.G.M. for undisclosed sums before trial began in late January 2026.³ Meta and Google have said they will appeal, arguing the verdict improperly reached content protected by Section 230 and the First Amendment.⁴

The trial served as the first bellwether in a California state court consolidation, JCCP 5255, which involves more than 800 cases before Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl.³

One day earlier, on March 24, 2026, a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million in civil penalties for misleading consumers about the safety of Facebook and Instagram and for endangering children. The penalties were calculated at $5,000 per violation under the state’s Unfair Practices Act, and the case, brought by Attorney General Raúl Torrez, was the first time a state government prevailed at trial against a major social media company over youth safety.⁵

That verdict triggered a second phase: a bench trial before Chief Judge Bryan Biedscheid on whether Meta’s platforms are a “public nuisance” under state law. The trial ran roughly two weeks starting May 4, 2026. The state asked for $3.7 billion in restitution over 15 years, a ban on infinite scroll, autoplay, and push notifications for minors during certain hours, a 90-hour monthly access cap for users under 18, and an independent child safety monitor.⁶ Judge Biedscheid signaled he was likely to find Meta’s apps a public nuisance but was skeptical of the scope of the state’s demands, telling both sides to submit “less maximalist” proposals and saying he was more comfortable with “the mechanics of the platforms, rather than the content of the platforms.” Written closing arguments were due June 12, 2026, and no final remedies ruling had been issued as of mid-2026.⁷ Meta called the state’s proposals “overbroad, vague, unworkable, dangerous” and suggested it might pull its platforms from New Mexico if the most aggressive demands were granted.

The Federal Multidistrict Litigation

The single largest pool of cases is In re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation, MDL 3047, before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in the Northern District of California. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation created the MDL in October 2022, and it now includes more than 2,400 cases filed by families, school districts, and state governments.⁸

These are not class actions. Each plaintiff keeps a separate case with its own damage claims, but the MDL allows shared discovery, common rulings, and bellwether trials. In November 2023, Judge Gonzalez Rogers rejected Meta’s argument that Section 230 and the First Amendment barred negligence claims, allowing “defective design and failure to warn” claims to move forward while dismissing claims that relied directly on third-party content.⁸

In June 2025, the court selected six school district cases from Maryland, Georgia, Kentucky, New Jersey, South Carolina, and Arizona as bellwethers. The first, brought by the Breathitt County School District in Kentucky against Meta, TikTok, Snap, and Google, was scheduled for trial on June 12, 2026. The district was seeking more than $60 million to fund a 15-year mental health and learning program. Breathitt County reached a settlement with all defendants before trial on undisclosed terms. The settlement covers only that district and does not resolve the roughly 1,200 other pending cases in the MDL.⁹

In April 2026, Judge Gonzalez Rogers denied most of Meta’s motion to dismiss claims brought by U.S. states inside the MDL, though she imposed some limits under Section 230. A second bellwether trial in the California state JCCP is scheduled for July 27, 2026, again before Judge Kuhl, with Meta and Google as defendants.⁸

The 42-State Attorney General Coalition

In October 2023, a bipartisan coalition of 42 attorneys general, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, sued Meta in the Northern District of California and in separate state courts. The complaint alleges Meta knowingly used manipulative design features to hook children and teens, citing recommendation algorithms, “likes” and social comparison tools, incessant notifications, visual filters that promote body dysmorphia, and infinite scroll.¹⁰

The states also allege Meta violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by collecting personal data from children under 13 without parental consent, and that the company deceptively misrepresented platform safety. Those state claims are being litigated inside the MDL framework alongside the individual and school district cases.¹⁰

Why the Design-Defect Theory Is Getting Past Section 230

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has long shielded platforms from liability for content posted by users, and it stopped most earlier lawsuits against tech companies. The current wave of Meta cases sidesteps that shield by framing the claims around product design rather than user content. The argument is that Meta built a defective product. Features like infinite scroll, autoplay, intermittent variable rewards (the slot-machine-like unpredictability of refreshing a feed), and algorithmic recommendations are treated as design defects the way faulty brakes on a car would be.¹¹

Several courts have now accepted the distinction. Judge Gonzalez Rogers let design-defect and failure-to-warn claims survive in the federal MDL in 2023.¹² In November 2025, Judge Kuhl in Los Angeles ruled that the jury could consider whether design features caused harm, clearing the K.G.M. trial to go forward.¹³

In April 2026, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court unanimously held in Commonwealth v. Meta Platforms Inc. that Section 230 does not shield Meta from claims about its own design choices and deceptive statements about Instagram’s safety. Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt wrote that the immunity is “much narrower” than Meta argued, applying only when litigation specifically targets “publishing activities” and seeks liability based on “third-party content.”¹⁴ The court let the state’s attorney general proceed with claims targeting infinite scroll, autoplay, intermittent variable rewards, ephemeral content, and defective age-verification features.¹⁵

Meta’s appeals from the Los Angeles and New Mexico verdicts will test whether this design-versus-content line holds at the appellate level. If it does, thousands of pending cases become materially more dangerous for the company.

European Union Enforcement

Meta’s legal exposure is not confined to the United States. On April 29, 2026, the European Commission issued preliminary findings that Meta is in breach of the EU’s Digital Services Act for failing to keep children under 13 off Facebook and Instagram. After a nearly two-year investigation opened in May 2024, the Commission concluded that Meta’s tools for reporting and removing underage users are “difficult to use and not effective,” and that children can bypass age restrictions simply by entering a fake birthdate.¹⁶

If the findings are upheld, Meta could face fines of up to 6 percent of its global annual revenue, which was $201 billion in 2025. The Commission is also still investigating the potentially addictive effect of Meta’s algorithms on young users. Meta disputes the findings and says it continues to invest in detecting and removing underage accounts.¹⁶ In October 2025, the Commission separately found that Meta’s platforms use “dark patterns” that discourage users from reporting illegal content, and that the company restricts researcher access to public data in violation of DSA transparency requirements.¹⁷

On the privacy side, the Austrian advocacy group NOYB has challenged Meta’s plan to train AI models on European users’ Facebook and Instagram data, which the company began pursuing in May 2025 under a claim of “legitimate interest” rather than opt-in consent. NOYB has issued a cease-and-desist letter and is weighing a class action it estimates could expose Meta to as much as €200 billion in damages across the EU.¹⁸

Federal Regulators and Legislation

The Federal Trade Commission is pursuing its own track. In May 2023, the FTC voted 3-0 to seek modifications to its 2020 consent order with Meta, proposing a permanent ban on the company monetizing data from users aged 17 and under, including for targeted advertising and AI model training. Meta said it would “vigorously fight this action.”¹⁹

Congress has moved on parallel legislation. By March 2026, the Senate had passed COPPA 2.0 by unanimous consent, extending data protections to minors under 17 and lowering the threshold for when companies are considered to have knowledge of underage users. The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved a package called the KIDS Act that includes a version of the Kids Online Safety Act, with provisions limiting addictive design features and letting users opt out of recommendation algorithms.²⁰ Neither had been signed into law as of mid-2026.

Other Pending and Recently Resolved Matters

In late 2025, the Delaware Court of Chancery approved a $190 million settlement of a shareholder lawsuit alleging that Meta’s board, including Mark Zuckerberg, failed to properly oversee the protection of Facebook user data. The case grew out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and investors alleged the board engineered a $5 billion FTC settlement in a way that shielded Zuckerberg from personal liability.²¹

Meta also remains subject to a 2022 consent agreement with the Department of Justice over algorithmic discrimination in housing advertisements. The DOJ found that Meta’s ad delivery system violated the Fair Housing Act by targeting housing ads based on race, sex, religion, and other protected characteristics. The settlement required Meta to discontinue its “Special Ad Audience” tool and build a new DOJ-approved delivery system overseen by an independent reviewer.¹⁹

What to Watch Next

The second California state court bellwether is set for July 27, 2026, again before Judge Kuhl. The New Mexico public nuisance remedies ruling is expected after closing arguments were due June 12, 2026. Meta’s appeals from the $6 million Los Angeles verdict and the $375 million New Mexico verdict will determine whether the product-liability theory holds up on review, and the outcome will shape the value of the roughly 1,200 remaining school district and family cases in MDL 3047. In Europe, the Commission’s DSA findings and NOYB’s AI-training challenge remain open, and the potential penalties there dwarf what U.S. juries have so far awarded.

1
New York Times. Social Media Trial Verdict
2
Courthouse News Service. Meta and Google Hit With $6 Million Verdict for Social Media Harms to Young Woman
3
NPR. Meta YouTube Social Media Trial Verdict
4
Reuters. What Comes Next After Social Media Trial Verdicts
5
New Mexico Department of Justice. New Mexico Department of Justice Wins Landmark Verdict Against Meta
6
News From the States. Judge Warns New Mexico Prosecutors He Won’t Overreach as Bench Trial Against Meta Begins
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Source NM. Judge Asks New Mexico, Meta to Be Pragmatic as Bench Trial Ends
8
Verus LLC. Social Media Addiction Litigation Timeline
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Spectrum News 1. Breathitt County Meta Lawsuit
10
New York Attorney General. Attorney General James and Multistate Coalition Sue Meta for Harming Youth
11
Lawfare. Does Product Liability Offer a Route Around Section 230
12
UCLA Law Review. Addicted by Design: Reassessing Section 230 in the New Era of Social Media Addiction Litigation
13
Spencer Law. Social Media Addiction Trial
14
Bloomberg Law. Meta Denied Shield in Massachusetts Youth Addiction Lawsuit
15
Commonwealth Beacon. In First Ruling of Its Kind, Mass. High Court Says Meta Not Shielded From Lawsuits Over Addictive Features
16
The Guardian. Meta Found in Breach of EU Law for Failing to Keep Children Off Platforms
17
ASIL. European Commission Preliminarily Finds TikTok and Meta Breach Digital Services Act
18
NOYB. NOYB Sends Meta Cease and Desist Letter Over AI Training
19
U.S. Department of Justice. Justice Department Secures Groundbreaking Settlement Agreement With Meta Platforms
20
Roll Call. Kids Online Safety Bills Move Forward From Senate, House Panel
21
The Recorder. $190M Settlement in Facebook User Privacy Case Wins Approval in Delaware Court