People of the State of California v. Meta Platforms, Inc.

MOTION in Limine NO. 3 TO EXCLUDE TESTIMONY FROM CERTAIN… — Attachment 369

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.

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.

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.

MOTION in Limine NO. 2 TO PRECLUDE EVIDENCE… — Attachment 367

Issue: Whether Section 230 bars the State of California from introducing evidence at trial that second-guesses Meta's internal policies and procedures governing content moderation.

Meta filed Motion in Limine No. 2 seeking to preclude the State of California from introducing evidence that critiques or second-guesses Meta's platform policies and procedures, arguing such evidence is both irrelevant and independently barred by Section 230. The motion is set for hearing on June 26, 2026, before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, with responses due June 17, 2026. The filing reflects Meta's effort to invoke Section 230 as an evidentiary shield at the trial stage — deploying the statute not merely to dismiss claims at the pleading stage but to exclude at trial any evidence that would effectively treat Meta as a publisher or speaker responsible for third-party content moderation decisions.

This motion represents a notable and relatively rare invocation of Section 230 as a trial-stage evidentiary bar rather than a pleading-stage immunity defense, testing whether §230 can preclude entire categories of evidence concerning platform policy choices — a question with significant implications for how government enforcement actions against platforms can be litigated. The outcome could clarify the extent to which Section 230's publisher immunity principle constrains not just liability theories but the evidentiary record in public-enforcement cases brought by state attorneys general.

Proposed Order re 369 MOTION in Limine NO. 3 TO EXCLUDE… — Attachment 375

Issue: Whether Section 230 bars the admission of evidence and testimony regarding Meta's content moderation policies, procedures, publishing activities, failure-to-warn omissions, and platform design features (including age verification and third-party filters) in the State of California's consumer protection action against Meta.

Meta filed five motions in limine seeking to exclude evidence or argument at trial on multiple grounds, including Section 230 immunity. The motions target: (1) testimony from former employees about Meta's operations; (2) evidence of Meta's alleged failure to warn users of platform risks; (3) evidence of Meta's publishing activities or "barred features" offered to prove misrepresentation claims; (4) evidence second-guessing Meta's content moderation policies and procedures as barred by Section 230; and (5) evidence or argument that Meta's age verification features and cosmetic surgery or other third-party filters constitute unfair practices. The proposed order suggests the court is being asked to apply Section 230 as an evidentiary and liability shield across multiple theories of California's case at the trial stage.

These motions present a significant and relatively rare trial-stage application of Section 230 as an evidentiary bar in a state attorney general enforcement action, directly testing the scope of Section 230 immunity against failure-to-warn, misrepresentation, and unfair business practices claims premised on Meta's publishing decisions and platform design — an important front in the ongoing litigation over whether Section 230 shields platform design choices and moderation policies from state consumer protection enforcement.

EXHIBITS re 285 Administrative Motion to File Under Seal… — Attachment 8

Issue: In *People of California v. Meta Platforms*, the State Attorneys General argue that Meta's deliberate deployment of psychologically exploitative design features — including variable-reward notification timing, infinite scroll, and algorithmically driven recommendation systems — constitutes deceptive and unfair conduct independent of any third-party content those features surface, and that Meta violated COPPA by continuing to collect and monetize data from under-13 users despite possessing internal evidence, including a direct report to Zuckerberg, confirming their presence on the platform. The filing also presses the contested question of whether a nominally general-audience platform with demonstrated heavy minor usership qualifies as "directed to children" under 16 C.F.R. § 312.2, which would trigger COPPA's full parental-consent regime regardless of how the platform markets itself.

The State Attorneys General filed this exhibit package on May 9, 2026, in the Northern District of California, as unsealed evidentiary support for their Reply in Support of their Motion for Partial Summary Judgment against Meta Platforms. Exhibit 14, the centerpiece of the package, is the AGs' Third Supplemental Response to Meta's First Set of Interrogatories — a detailed narrative of the plaintiffs' theory of the case backed by citations to expert reports and deposition testimony. The AGs argue that Meta's algorithmic design choices functioned like slot-machine mechanics to entrench compulsive use in minors, that internal research linking platform features to eating disorders and depression was concealed until whistleblower disclosure, and that Meta's time-management and parental-supervision tools were pretextual rather than effective. On COPPA, the AGs contend that internal demographic data, age-estimation algorithm outputs, and deposition testimony from current and former Meta executives eliminate any genuine factual dispute about the company's actual knowledge of under-13 users, warranting summary judgment on liability as a matter of law. The filing also alleges that Meta's retention of deactivated minor accounts — for up to one year before April 2024 — constitutes a continuing violation independent of active data collection.

This filing sharpens three doctrinal pressure points simultaneously. First, by framing Meta's UX and algorithmic architecture as standalone liability-generating conduct divorced from the third-party content they deliver, the AGs are asking the court to draw — at summary judgment and as a matter of law — the line between immunized content-presentation choices and non-immunized product design that courts have struggled to locate since the *Instagram MDL* proceedings. Second, the COPPA actual-knowledge argument, if credited, would represent one of the first Article III holdings imposing COPPA liability on a major platform through litigation rather than consent decree, generating immediate pressure for circuit-level resolution. Third, the "directed to children" theory applied to a general-audience platform with heavy minor usership pushes the § 312.2 definition well beyond prior FTC enforcement targets, and if adopted, would effectively require any platform with substantial underage engagement to comply with COPPA's full consent regime regardless of marketing intent — a structural shift with industry-wide consequences.

STATEMENT OF RECENT DECISION pursuant to Civil Local… — Attachment 294

Issue: In *People of California v. Meta Platforms*, the State Attorneys General argue that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act does not immunize Meta from state consumer protection claims targeting the company's own design choices and business practices — as opposed to its role in publishing third-party content. The question is legally contested because Section 230(e)(3) expressly preempts state laws "inconsistent with" its immunity provisions, and the Ninth Circuit has historically read that bar broadly, leaving unresolved how far it extends to claims framed around a platform's independent conduct rather than its editorial functions.

Days before a scheduled April 15, 2026 hearing on Meta's pending Motion for Summary Judgment, the Attorneys General of California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey filed a Statement of Recent Decision pursuant to Civil Local Rule 7-3(d)(2), submitting as Exhibit A the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's April 10, 2026 opinion in *Commonwealth v. Meta Platforms, Inc.*, No. SJC-13747. The filing is a procedural notice, not a substantive brief, and contains no quotation or textual analysis of the SJC opinion — the opinion itself is attached and left to speak. Plaintiffs' position is that the SJC, a court of last resort, held that Section 230 does not bar state consumer protection claims against Meta, and that this ruling constitutes directly on-point persuasive authority the MDL court should consider when ruling on Meta's summary judgment motion. The filing asks for no independent relief; it asks only that the Court take notice of the opinion.

Meta's central defense at summary judgment is that Section 230 extinguishes the states' consumer protection claims before they can reach a jury, on the theory that those claims would effectively hold Meta liable as a publisher of harmful user-generated content. The Massachusetts Supreme Court — one of the most respected state courts of last resort in the country — just rejected that argument in a case involving the same defendant and a structurally similar legal theory, and Plaintiffs are placing that ruling before the MDL judge at the earliest opportunity. Whether it moves the needle depends on how closely the Massachusetts claims and pleadings track those at issue in the MDL, a question the filing conspicuously leaves unaddressed and that Meta will almost certainly contest. The filing also signals a deliberate multi-forum strategy by the state AGs: collecting appellate-level authority across jurisdictions to build persuasive momentum against Section 230 preemption — a campaign worth watching as similar litigation proceeds in other states.

STATEMENT OF RECENT DECISION pursuant to Civil Local…

Issue: Commonwealth v. Meta Platforms, Inc.* asks whether Section 230(c)(1) immunizes Meta from state consumer protection and public nuisance claims premised on Instagram's addictive design features — infinite scroll, autoplay, and variable-reward notifications — and on Meta's own public misrepresentations about youth safety, arising from evidence that Meta possessed internal data confirming harm to adolescents while representing the platform as safe. The question is non-obvious because courts have disagreed sharply on whether platform architecture choices are inseparable from the editorial function of publishing third-party content, which would bring them within Section 230's immunity, or whether they are independent conduct that the statute was never meant to reach.

Four plaintiff-states (California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey) filed this Statement of Recent Decision on April 13, 2026, under Civil Local Rule 7-3(d), to place before the Court a newly issued opinion directly relevant to Meta's pending motion to dismiss (Related Doc. 266). The attached opinion is *Commonwealth v. Meta Platforms, Inc.*, decided April 10, 2026, by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court — that state's highest court — affirming the Superior Court's denial of Meta's motion to dismiss on all four counts. The SJC held that Section 230 immunity does not extend to claims grounded in a platform's own design choices or its own deceptive statements, articulating a formal two-element test: a barred claim must allege both a dissemination act and liability grounded in the harmful character of third-party content. Because design-defect claims are content-neutral on their face — the alleged harm from addictive architecture operates regardless of what any user posts — and because Meta's misrepresentations are the platform's own speech rather than third-party content, neither category satisfies both elements. The SJC expressly identified and declined to follow this MDL court's prior rulings at 702 and 753 F. Supp. 3d, finding them inconsistent with common-law publisher principles and Section 230's legislative history.

The opinion is the most prominent state appellate-court decision to date to categorically hold that Section 230 does not immunize platform design-defect or product-deception claims, and it does so through a textually grounded, common-law publisher framework that is methodologically distinct from — and directly contests — the reasoning this MDL court has previously applied. By naming and rejecting the MDL court's prior rulings, the SJC supplies a reasoned, appellate-level counter-analysis that, while not binding in federal court, materially reduces those rulings' persuasive authority and gives this Court a fully developed alternative framework to consider when resolving the pending motion. The procedural holding — that Section 230 immunity supports interlocutory appeal under the present-execution doctrine — also signals that state courts of last resort are prepared to treat Section 230 as a true immunity from suit, consistent with federal consensus but now carrying explicit state appellate endorsement. What remains open is whether this Court will credit the SJC's common-law publisher test over its own prior analysis, a question that will be resolved when it rules on Related Doc. 266.

Redacted Filing — Attachment 275

Issue: Whether §230(c)(1) of the Communications Decency Act bars state Attorneys General's unfairness and deception claims under state consumer protection laws based on Meta's alleged addictive platform design features and misrepresentations about platform safety directed at minors.

Eighteen state Attorneys General filed an opposition to Meta's motion for summary judgment and a cross-motion for partial summary judgment in the MDL proceeding concerning social media adolescent addiction. The AGs argued that §230 does not bar their unfairness claims because those claims target Meta's own product design choices rather than third-party content, relying on the Ninth Circuit's framework in *Calise v. Meta Platforms* and *Doe v. Internet Brands*. The AGs also cross-moved for partial summary judgment on the commerce-related elements of their state consumer protection claims, contending that Meta's statements constitute deceptive commercial speech unprotected by the First Amendment and that the Noerr-Pennington doctrine does not shield Meta's alleged misrepresentations. On the COPPA claim, the AGs argued Meta had actual knowledge of users under thirteen and that disgorgement is available as a remedy under COPPA's remedial provision.

This filing advances the critical and unsettled question of whether §230 immunizes a platform's affirmative design decisions—such as algorithmic features allegedly engineered to maximize adolescent engagement—when challenged by state enforcement authorities rather than private plaintiffs, potentially establishing that state AG consumer protection actions targeting platform architecture fall outside §230's immunity.