People of the State of California v. Meta Platforms, Inc.
Issue
Whether Section 230 bars testimony from former Meta employees regarding the platform's design and moderation decisions, and whether such testimony constitutes impermissible lay opinion.
What Happened
Meta filed a motion in limine seeking to exclude testimony from certain former employees on two grounds: (1) that Section 230 bars such testimony as it would impermissibly treat Meta as the publisher or speaker of third-party content, and (2) that the testimony constitutes inadmissible lay opinion under the Federal Rules of Evidence. The motion is set for hearing before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers on June 26, 2026, with plaintiff responses due June 17, 2026. The filing signals that Meta is attempting to deploy Section 230 not merely as a liability defense but as an evidentiary shield to exclude witness testimony about internal editorial and design decisions at trial.
Why It Matters
This motion presents a consequential and underexplored question about whether Section 230's immunity extends to evidentiary proceedings — specifically, whether the statute can be used to exclude testimony that would characterize a platform's internal decisions as publisher or editorial choices, potentially expanding Section 230's reach beyond its traditional role as a liability bar into a trial-stage evidentiary doctrine. The outcome could affect how government plaintiffs in the wave of state AG and AG-parallel cases against Meta are able to introduce internal evidence of platform design and moderation decisions at trial.
Related Filings
Other proceedings in the same litigation tracked by this monitor.
How accurate was this summary?