Meta Platforms, Inc. v. Bonta

OPPOSITION/RESPONSE (re 99 Administrative Motion to File… — Attachment 105

Issue: In *Meta Platforms, Inc. v. Bonta*, Defendant Rob Bonta argues that Meta's attempt to seal portions of an expert declaration describing its recommendation algorithm must satisfy the heightened "compelling reasons" standard rather than the more permissive "good cause" standard, because the underlying preliminary injunction seeks relief coextensive with the ultimate complaint. The question turns on whether Meta's supporting evidentiary showing — which relies on hedged language about potential competitive harm — meets that demanding threshold, and whether the public's interest in understanding how Meta's algorithm works, given that the algorithm's expressive character is the central First Amendment question before the Court, independently forecloses sealing.

At the preliminary injunction stage of this First Amendment challenge to California's SB976, Meta filed portions of Dr. Bamshad Mobasher's expert declaration entirely under seal, supported by the Eulenstein Declaration asserting competitive harm. Defendant Rob Bonta filed this opposition on May 15, 2026, contesting Meta's administrative motion to seal. Bonta argues that the *compelling reasons* standard governs under *Center for Auto Safety v. Chrysler Group*, that Meta's harm showing is legally insufficient because it relies on speculative, hedged language ("could," "may motivate") rather than concrete injury, and that comparable platforms — TikTok and YouTube — declined to seek equivalent sealing in parallel SB976 proceedings. Bonta further contends that the Court itself identified the opacity of each platform's algorithm as a focal question at the April 29, 2026 hearing, making public access to the Mobasher Declaration essential to meaningful scrutiny of any ruling the Court issues. Bonta asks the Court to deny sealing entirely and order a fully public filing, or at minimum an interim redacted version.

This filing is procedurally routine but contextually significant: California is actively contesting Meta's ability to litigate the First Amendment merits of SB976 while keeping key technical evidence about its recommendation algorithm shielded from public view. If the Court denies the seal, the factual record describing how Meta's recommendation system actually operates — the same record the Court has signaled is central to whether that system constitutes protected editorial expression — enters the public domain, potentially influencing parallel SB976 litigation against other platforms. More broadly, the filing advances an implicit argument that in First Amendment challenges to platform-regulation laws, algorithm-operation descriptions should be treated as presumptively public record because they form the evidentiary predicate for the constitutional ruling itself; if a court were to adopt that reasoning even in passing, it would meaningfully constrain how platforms shield recommendation-system architecture from public view in future content-moderation litigation.

Issue: Whether social media platform defendants (Meta, TikTok, Snap, and Google/YouTube) are entitled to summary judgment on school districts' negligence, failure-to-warn, and public nuisance claims arising from the platforms' design features and algorithmic systems alleged to cause adolescent addiction and mental health harm.

This document is a declaration by California Deputy Attorney General Shiwon Choe filed in *Meta Platforms, Inc. v. Bonta* (N.D. Cal. No. 5:25-cv-09792), supporting the state's administrative motion for limited expedited discovery in connection with Meta's pending motion for a preliminary injunction. The declaration attaches, as exhibits, filings from the related MDL proceeding *In re Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation* (No. 4:22-md-03047-YGR), specifically the school districts' corrected omnibus opposition to defendants' motions for summary judgment. In that MDL opposition, plaintiffs argue that genuine disputes of material fact preclude summary judgment on failure-to-warn, negligence, and public nuisance theories, contending defendants had knowledge of harms to minors, targeted schools and children, and failed to exercise reasonable care, and that causation and damages questions are for the jury.

The California AG's use of the MDL summary judgment record as evidence in the *Bonta* preliminary injunction proceeding signals that state regulators are actively leveraging private litigation findings to resist platform efforts to enjoin state enforcement, potentially reinforcing the evidentiary foundation for state-level regulation of platform design and youth safety obligations.