{"id":22204,"date":"2026-04-02T10:12:48","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T14:12:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4bd619bca4.nxcli.io\/?p=22204"},"modified":"2026-03-31T11:13:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T15:13:22","slug":"two-verdicts-in-two-days-what-the-meta-rulings-in-new-mexico-and-los-angeles-mean-for-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/napolilaw.com\/es\/article\/two-verdicts-in-two-days-what-the-meta-rulings-in-new-mexico-and-los-angeles-mean-for-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Verdicts in Two Days: What the Meta Rulings in New Mexico and Los Angeles Mean for Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

By:\u00a0<\/span>shayna sacos<\/span><\/a>, Partner, Napoli Shkolnik\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This week, in the span of two days, juries handed down two landmark verdicts against Meta. Together, they\u00a0represent\u00a0the most significant legal accountability these platforms have faced over the harm they have caused to children. For the school districts Napoli Shkolnik\u00a0represents, they are exactly the\u00a0validation\u00a0the litigation has been building toward.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

New Mexico: $375 Million and a Finding of Willful Deception<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On March 24, a Santa Fe\u00a0<\/span>jury found Meta liable<\/span><\/a>\u00a0on every count in a lawsuit brought by New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez. The jury concluded that Meta willfully violated the state’s consumer protection law by misleading users about the safety of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp\u00a0and by\u00a0failing to protect\u00a0children from sexual predators on its platforms.\u00a0They have been ordered to pay $375 million in damages as part of the verdict.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is\u00a0one of\u00a0the\u00a0first times\u00a0a state has successfully taken Meta to trial over child safety and won. The jury\u00a0found that Meta’s own choices, including how it designed its platforms, what it knew about exploitation, and what it chose not to tell the public, were the basis for liability.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Internal documents introduced at trial showed that Meta employees raised concerns about child sexual exploitation, including communications showing the company understood that encryption features would shield the transmission of child sexual abuse material from law enforcement. The company moved forward anyway.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The second phase of the New Mexico case begins May 4, when a judge will\u00a0determine\u00a0whether Meta must also fund public programs to address the harm its platforms caused.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Los Angeles: A Jury Finds Platform Design Was the Harm<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The very next day,\u00a0<\/span>a Los Angeles jury in the JCCP<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0or the Judicial Council Coordinated Proceeding,\u00a0a state court mechanism that\u00a0consolidates\u00a0similar cases,\u00a0found Meta and YouTube negligent.\u00a0They were\u00a0ordered to pay $4.2 million and $1.8 million respectively in combined compensatory and punitive damages\u00a0to\u00a0the\u00a0now-20-year-old plaintiff whose social media use, beginning at age 10, led to anxiety, depression, self-harm, and body dysmorphia. TikTok and Snap had already settled before trial.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This case was the first individual-plaintiff trial in the broader JCCP\u00a0proceedings.\u00a0The jury found that both companies knew their platform designs were dangerous, that users would not realize the danger, and that the companies\u00a0failed to\u00a0warn users when a reasonable platform would have. The plaintiffs’ theory, which centered on how the platforms were built rather than what users posted on them, successfully navigated around Section 230 immunity.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What This Means for Our School District Clients<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The legal theory our school district clients rely on runs parallel to\u00a0both of these\u00a0verdicts. We are not arguing that social media companies\u00a0are responsible for\u00a0what individual users post. We are arguing that these platforms were designed to maximize engagement at the expense of children’s wellbeing, that the companies knew it, and that schools have absorbed enormous real costs as a result\u00a0related to\u00a0counseling resources, special education referrals, administrator time, and the daily human toll of a student population in crisis.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This week’s verdicts\u00a0validate\u00a0that framework at both the state government and individual-plaintiff level. They\u00a0establish\u00a0that juries, when presented with the evidence, are willing to hold these companies accountable for their design choices. They\u00a0also\u00a0demonstrate\u00a0that Section 230 is not an impenetrable shield when the harm being alleged is the product’s own architecture.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The platforms have\u00a0maintained\u00a0for years that they are neutral intermediaries. Two juries in two days rejected that argument. The litigation continues, and Napoli Shkolnik will be at the table.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By:\u00a0Shayna Sacks, Partner, Napoli Shkolnik\u00a0\u00a0 This week, in the span of two days, juries handed down two landmark verdicts against Meta. Together, they\u00a0represent\u00a0the most significant legal accountability these platforms have…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":22205,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[772],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-litigation"],"acf":[],"page_builder_type":"gutenberg","gutenberg_data":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/napolilaw.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/napolilaw.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/napolilaw.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/napolilaw.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/napolilaw.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/napolilaw.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22207,"href":"https:\/\/napolilaw.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22204\/revisions\/22207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/napolilaw.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/napolilaw.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/napolilaw.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/napolilaw.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}