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143 resultsIN RE: SOCIAL MEDIA ADOLESCENT ADDICTION/PERSONAL INJURY PRODUCTS LIABILITY LITIGATION
Issue: Whether evidence of content and platform features is subject to exclusion at trial under §230 of the Communications Decency Act and the First Amendment in a products liability action brought by a school board against Meta and other social media defendants.
Why It Matters: Insufficient text to determine the precise arguments or the court's reasoning, but the existence of a motion in limine framing §230 and the First Amendment as evidentiary shields — rather than pleading-stage defenses — signals that defendants are pursuing these protections through trial to limit what a jury may consider regarding platform content and design features.
View on CourtListener →NETCHOICE LLC v. UTHMEIER
Why It Matters: This motion sits at the intersection of two of the most contested questions in platform law: what *Moody v. NetChoice* actually means for state content-regulation statutes, and how courts should evaluate expert testimony about how platform algorithms function. If the court excludes Bapna—particularly on the ground that no real-world platform operates as a pure engagement-maximizer indifferent to content standards—it removes the factual foundation Florida needs to sustain its regulatory theory after *Moody*, and signals how similar evidentiary battles will play out in challenges to comparable laws in other states. Even a narrower ruling grounded solely in methodology would leave open the *Moody* reservation question for the merits, but would deprive defendants of the only expert testimony asserting that algorithmic curation is categorically distinct from protected editorial judgment. For anyone tracking state social-media regulation efforts nationwide, this motion is an early indicator of the evidentiary threshold states will face in constructing post-*Moody* records.
View on CourtListener →Why It Matters: The brief's most consequential — and most legally exposed — move is treating the "dumb pipe" framing as controlling law, when that language appears only in a three-Justice *Moody* concurrence in the judgment, not the majority opinion; if a court accepts it, the result would mark the most significant contraction of First Amendment protection for platform editorial activity in decades. The quasi-facial recharacterization argument is the brief's strongest procedural play, because *Moody*'s substantial-outweighs standard is black-letter law and plaintiffs' post-remand record may not satisfy it. The § 1983 cause-of-action argument, while less prominent in the brief, is doctrinally serious and could foreclose the Section 230 preemption claims entirely without reaching the merits — a clean, narrow path to partial judgment that courts sometimes prefer.
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