Google, Meta and TikTok sue California to block new teen social media law

Google, Meta Platforms and TikTok each sued the state of California this week to block a new law that would bar the companies from offering personalized, "addictive" features to users younger than 16, opening a fresh legal front in the long-running fight over how far states can go in regulating how children use social media. All three suits name California Attorney General Rob Bonta as the sole defendant.

The three companies filed separate complaints in federal district courts in San Jose, San Francisco and Los Angeles on Wednesday. All three target Assembly Bill 1709, which Governor Gavin Newsom signed on Sept. 10 and which is scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, 2027, unless a judge blocks it first.

A tougher rewrite of an existing law

AB 1709 amends California's two-year-old Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act, tightening restrictions that Google, Meta and TikTok had already challenged once, without success. The new law prohibits covered platforms from offering users under 16 what it defines as "psychologically exploitative features intended to maximize engagement that foreseeably lead to compulsive use" — a category that includes personalized recommendation feeds and autoplay video, according to a statement from Common Sense Media, the children's advocacy group that sponsored the bill. Platforms may still let children under 16 hold accounts, but only stripped of those features, and must verify users' ages to determine who qualifies.

The statute sets civil penalties of up to $50,000 per affected minor for knowing violations and up to $25,000 per minor for negligent ones, enforceable by the attorney general or local prosecutors. It also creates a five-member e-Safety Advisory Commission inside the California Department of Justice, which is to report annually to the governor and Legislature. The companies' earlier challenge to the underlying 2024 law, filed in November 2025, produced a denied preliminary injunction and an unsuccessful appeal, leaving that statute in effect while this newer, stricter version heads to court.

First Amendment and parental-rights arguments

The three complaints share a common legal theory: that AB 1709 violates the First Amendment by letting state officials dictate how platforms select and arrange content, and that it is preempted by Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which shields online services from liability for how they handle third-party content. Each company also argues the law improperly substitutes Sacramento's judgment for parents' own decisions about what their children see online.

Meta's filing says the state cannot override the company's "constitutionally protected editorial discretion" over how it organizes and displays billions of posts of third-party speech, particularly since other platforms without the targeted features remain open to the same children without restriction. TikTok's complaint argues that protected speech "cannot be suppressed solely to protect the young from ideas or images that a legislative body thinks unsuitable." A Google spokesperson, Jose Castaneda, said "parents are best positioned to make the right decisions for their families," adding that "overly broad laws like this actually break the systems we've built" to surface age-appropriate videos for younger users on YouTube.

Who is affected, and who is reacting

The law reaches any social media platform operating in California with features meeting its definition of addictive design, meaning its practical effect extends well beyond the three companies that sued. Teenagers and younger children in the state are the law's intended beneficiaries; parents, schools and platforms with large California user bases are the parties most directly affected by how the litigation resolves.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which lobbied against the bill before it was signed, has called it "a massive privacy and free speech nightmare." The digital-rights group had urged Newsom in writing to veto the measure, warning that age-verification mandates needed to enforce it would push platforms toward collecting more sensitive data on users of all ages, not just minors. EFF associate director Rindala Alajaji said bans that "cut young people off from digital lifelines, communities, and speech" do not make them safer.

"California will not stand by while unregulated technology puts our children at risk," Newsom said when he signed the bill in September.

Common Sense Media, which sponsored AB 1709, has praised the law as a milestone; its founder and chief executive, Jim Steyer, said California had "drawn the line" the industry had long refused to draw itself. Bonta's office, the law's sole defendant, said it is reviewing the newly filed suits and remains "committed to defending California's commonsense laws to protect kids online."

Part of a wider, unresolved fight

The new litigation lands amid a broader reckoning over platform design and youth mental health that has already reshaped the companies' legal exposure elsewhere. In August, Meta agreed to settlements worth as much as $18 billion with nearly all U.S. states over allegations that Facebook and Instagram were designed to addict children, and a federal appeals court separately cleared the way for thousands of individual lawsuits making similar claims against Meta, Google, TikTok and Snap to proceed. None of those allegations has been proven in the AB 1709 litigation or elsewhere.

What happens next turns on how quickly a judge rules. The companies are expected to seek a preliminary injunction to keep AB 1709 from taking effect on Jan. 1, mirroring the strategy they used against the 2024 law — a strategy that failed in that earlier case after a federal judge in San Jose declined to block enforcement and an appeals panel agreed. Whether the newer law's narrower focus on specific "addictive" features, rather than broader feed restrictions, fares differently in court is likely to take months to resolve, and any ruling is expected to be appealed regardless of which side wins at the district court level.