Social media lawsuits can bring about social change
It is truly remarkable how a civil lawsuit filed by an individual or entity in Anytown, USA, has the potential for bringing about significant and sweeping social change. For example, currently there is pending litigation that has the potential for changing the social media network as people now know and use it.
Recently, hundreds of families around the country began filing individual lawsuits against social media giants over what they claimed was harm caused to their children by social media sites. Then, Seattle’s public school district joined the fray, filing a public nuisance lawsuit alleging Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and Google deliberately addicted children to their platforms. The school district went on to allege these social media sites dispersed inappropriate content that resulted in harms to children, including anxiety, depression, eating disorders and cyber bullying, to name only a few.
These lawsuits could become very large-scale, resulting in mass-tort litigation, according to a Feb. 27 article in Courthouse News Service, “Social media’s harm to kids: The next blockbuster lawsuit?” The article compares these social media lawsuits to tobacco and opioid litigation; litigation that brought about massive changes in how tobacco and opioids are marketed, sold and otherwise dispensed.
There is a related case before the United States Supreme Court involving legal immunity for social media sites. A family in California sued Google and YouTube for allegedly aiding and abetting an act of international terrorism. Their 23-yearold daughter was killed while dining out in Paris in November 2015 when Islamic State terrorists fired into the restaurant. The family alleged that Google and YouTube allowed ISIS to post hundreds of radicalizing videos, which then allegedly incited the violence which killed their daughter.
The issue is whether a legal shield erected by Congress in 1996, known as Section 230, should be “pierced” — essentially modified or done away with. Presently, under federal law a social media site “may not be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” And now that legal shield is being challenged. Depending on how the U.S. Supreme Court decides, there is the possibility of very massive changes to the type and actual content of information made available on social media networks going forward.
The power of the civil lawsuit has not only flexed its muscle in terms of how the internet may operate in the future. Civil lawsuits have shaped significant societal changes and policies in the areas of consumer product safety, employment, education, the environment and civil rights, just to name only a very few.
Some lawsuits begin with a single individual claiming a harm and seeking damages. Where there are similarly situated individuals, such a lawsuit can morph into a class-action lawsuit, another powerful tool in bringing about changes that affect society. Or the individual’s lawsuit may motivate other individuals to file similar lawsuits in jurisdictions around our country, creating the mass-tort litigation effect mentioned in the Courthouse Services News article previously mentioned.
As a general rule, most civil lawsuits are settled by the parties, and some are dismissed by trial courts on the undisputed facts and/or law. But some lawsuits go the distance and end up in our appellate court system, sometimes all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. It is in these appellate court cases where significant social policy is crafted.
Lest some people be concerned by the possibility of unfettered judiciary-making policies, there are checks and balances in place. The legislative branches of government, both at a federal and state level, can, and have, responded to judicially created policies by enacting preemptive, and sometimes complementary, legislation. It is very possible, for example, that both state legislatures and our federal Congress may address the very issues currently being litigated in the lawsuits against social media platforms.
In the final analysis, however, no one should ever doubt the power of a civil lawsuit in America. Its capacity for bringing about, or at least initiating, significant changes in our everyday lives has been demonstrated time and time again.