LOS ANGELES — Neither San Diego's public schools nor three other public school districts from elsewhere in the U.S. should be able to continue with their lawsuits demanding social media companies pay for allegedly causing "public nuisances" by allegedly harming the mental health of children and teens, and, in turn, allegedly placing a heavier burden on public educators, a California state appeals panel has ruled.
On Nov. 5, a three-justice panel of the California Second District Court of Appeals in Los Angeles upheld an L.A. County Superior Court judge's ruling tossing the state-law claims leveled against a host of popular social media platform operators by four large public school districts.
The public school districts whose legal actions were included in the decision include California's second largest public school district, San Diego Unified School District, as well as Vancouver (Washington) School District No. 37; School Board of Brevard County (Florida); and the West Warwick Public Schools of Kent County, Rhode Island.
Defendants in the action include Facebook- and Instagram-parent company Meta; TikTok parent, Bytedance; SnapChat operator Snap Inc.; and Google, which also operates YouTube.
The school districts were among thousands of public school operators from throughout the U.S. to sue the social media companies in recent years as part of a gambit coordinated by trial lawyers to extract payouts from the companies over alleged societal harms caused or exacerbated by the social media products.
Since 2022, thousands of lawsuits have poured into state and federal courts across the country, filed by individuals, families, school districts, state governments and more.
The lawsuits claimed social media operators should be held responsible for allegedly creating a mental and behavioral health crisis among American children and teens, encouraging young people to engage in potentially harmful behaviors, while increasing dysfunction, anxiety, depression and other psychological and emotional disorders and maladies.
And all of the lawsuits are seeking at least millions of dollars each from the companies for the alleged harm their products have caused.
In recent years, trial lawyers, government officials, left-wing activists and others have publicly discussed an overall grand strategy behind the litigation effort, as they seek to replicate the legal and regulatory campaign that produced strong new government regulatory powers and which wrung billions of dollars out of tobacco companies over the societal harms of cigarette smoking in decades past.
More than 3,000 of the lawsuits against social media companies have been consolidated in federal court in Oakland before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. Many other lawsuits, however, have remained pending in state court.
Meta and their co-defendants have failed repeatedly to pull the plug on most of those lawsuits, to this point.
However, they have found some success in knocking down some of the legal claims lodged against them by school districts.
In L.A. County Superior Court, for instance, Judge Carolyn Kuhl in 2024 dismissed the lawsuits filed by San Diego Unified and the school districts from Washington, Florida and Rhode Island.
And the Second District panel refused to allow the districts to revive their cases, saying their claims were doomed under the laws of their respective states.
The justices said their claims lacked any true injuries that courts would recognize under the law. The justices said the districts couldn't pursue claims to recover alleged costs they bore for "lost staff time" or "frustration of educational mission" allegedly caused by student behavioral or other mental health deficiencies allegedly caused by social media use or "addiction."
Further, the justices rejected the school districts claims that the allegedly societal harms allegedly caused by social media "addiction" amounts to a public nuisance.
They said California law specifically blocks the San Diego district from leveling such nuisance claims at all. While the school district is considered a "person" under the law, it is not a "private person," the judges said. And under California law, only "private persons" can sue for claims of "public nuisance," they said.
They further rejected San Diego Unified's attempt to sidestep that prohibition by claiming they are suing as a property owner.
But, the justices said, "any connection to property here is abstract at best."
The school district's "complaint’s focus throughout its 286 pages is on the 'unprecedented mental health crisis' among students and its disruption to schools’ public educational mission. It contains only isolated, conclusory allegations in a few paragraphs that Defendants’ conduct 'adversely impacts [San Diego’s] use and enjoyment of its property,' and Defendants’ nuisance 'is connected to [San Diego’s] property, and its use and enjoyment of the same.'
"San Diego’s opening brief argues that 'Defendants’ conduct interfered with [San Diego’s] use of school property' by disrupting school operations and forcing it to divert scarce resources from its educational mission...
"... Accepting San Diego’s position would convert virtually any personal injury affecting a property owner into a nuisance," the justices said.
The justices also ruled the other school districts' lawsuits are similarly disqualified under their own state's laws, ruling the districts cannot cobble together public nuisance claims from a host of allegedly associated individual harms suffered by a subset of their communities' children and teens.
The justices declined to rule on the social media companies' assertions that the school districts' lawsuits should also be disallowed under federal law and the U.S. Constitution.
The decision was authored by Justice Anne Richardson. Justices Elwood Lui and Stephen Goortvich concurred.
The school districts were represented by attorneys from the firms of Panish Shea Ravipudi; Esner Chang Boyer & Murphy; Wagstaff & Cartmell; and Morgan & Morgan.
Snap was represented by attorneys from the firm of Munger Tolles & Olson.
Tiktok and Bytedance were represented by attorneys from the firm of King & Spalding.
Meta was represented by the firm of Covington & Burling.
And Google and Youtube were represented by the firm of Williams & Connolly.
