A U.S. appeals court on Monday cleared the way for roughly 2,400 lawsuits accusing major social media companies of designing products to be addictive to young users, rejecting the tech firms' bid to derail the litigation.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals turned aside appeals by Meta Platforms, Alphabet's Google, ByteDance's TikTok and Snap Inc's Snapchat, which sought to reverse a lower court's refusal to dismiss the cases. The court found the companies' appeal had been filed prematurely in the legal process. The suits, filed by states, school districts, municipalities and individuals, are consolidated before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California.
The ruling adds to mounting legal pressure on the industry. In March, a California jury ordered Meta and Google to pay $6 million to a young woman over social media addiction claims, while TikTok and Snapchat had already settled with the plaintiff.