OAKLAND, Calif. — The courtroom on the seventh floor of the federal courthouse here has been prepared for a trial that could run six weeks, with jury selection beginning this week in a case brought by 29 states against Meta Platforms. The states, led by California’s attorney general, accuse the company of designing Facebook and Instagram to addict minors and of hiding internal research that showed the harm its own scientists had documented.
The stakes are enormous on paper. Meta said in a court filing that penalties in the case could reach as much as $1.4 trillion, a figure legal experts called unrealistic but which CNBC described as astronomical. The trial opens two weeks after a New Mexico jury ordered the company to pay $567 million in a separate youth-addiction case, a verdict that has given the states’ attorneys a recent precedent to cite and Meta’s lawyers fresh wounds to manage.
The lawsuit, filed in 2023, alleges that Meta engineered features — infinite feeds, notification loops, social-comparison metrics — specifically to keep young users engaged, and that the company suppressed or minimized research suggesting the platforms damaged teenagers’ mental health. Meta has denied the core claims, arguing that its products include extensive parental controls, that its research shows no causal link between social media and mental-health harm, and that the states are seeking to hold the company liable for broader social trends.
The trial’s mechanics are unusual. State attorneys general rarely try cases of this scale; the plaintiffs’ side is a coalition of lawyers from California, Colorado, Kentucky, New Jersey and other states coordinating arguments. The defense is led by Meta’s general counsel’s office and outside firms. Both sides spent the weekend filing motions over evidence, witness lists and which internal documents the jury will see.
Documents will be the battleground. The states’ case leans on internal Meta research and communications, some of which have already surfaced in congressional hearings and prior litigation, showing employees discussing teen anxiety, sleep disruption and body-image issues tied to platform use. Meta argues those documents are taken out of context and that its research programs were designed to improve safety, not conceal harm.
Beyond the courtroom, Meta faces a second front. Regulators in the U.S. and Europe have been circling the same questions, and the company’s handling of minors has become a recurring theme in legislative hearings. Opinion surveys show broad public support for stricter platform rules for teenagers, a shift that complicates Meta’s lobbying posture even when it wins in court.
A loss here would be expensive in ways beyond the headline number. State settlements in similar cases have historically included conduct requirements — product changes, independent audits, reporting obligations — that can outlast any fine. People familiar with the states’ strategy said the coalition is prepared to push for injunctive relief that would require Meta to change how its platforms work for users under 18, not just pay damages.
For Meta, the trial lands at a delicate moment. The company has been investing heavily in AI infrastructure, and its advertising business has been growing steadily, but it has also spent years defending itself against regulators on multiple fronts. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has testified before Congress on child safety; the company has introduced teen-account protections that limit nighttime notifications and default to private settings. Whether those changes satisfy a jury is the question now before the court.
Analysts said the New Mexico verdict changed the calculus. “Two weeks ago, a jury in this country ordered Meta to pay $567 million on similar facts,” said one trial lawyer who has followed the cases. “That number is now the floor in every settlement conversation. The states know it, and Meta knows it.”
The company has said it will appeal the New Mexico ruling and that it believes the Oakland case raises different legal questions, including which state laws apply to conduct that crosses state lines. Its lawyers have also argued that the $1.4 trillion exposure figure cited in filings reflects a statutory-damages theory that no court has ever applied at this scale.
The trial also arrives as the states themselves diverge on strategy. Most of the 29 coalition members signed onto the Oakland case, but a handful of states pursued their own suits, and New Mexico’s separate action produced the $567 million verdict that now hangs over the proceedings. Legal analysts said the fragmentation cuts both ways: it gives Meta more forums to fight in, but it also multiplies the number of juries that can rule against it, and each adverse verdict strengthens the next plaintiffs’ hand.
Whatever the outcome, the case is likely to define how much of Meta’s internal research becomes public. The company has fought disclosure of employee communications and internal studies for years, and much of what juries see in Oakland will be material the states pried loose through discovery. Scholars who study platform regulation said the trial record itself, whatever the verdict, will become a reference point for lawmakers drafting the next round of children’s online safety bills.
Jury selection is expected to take several days, with opening statements to follow. The trial’s outcome will not resolve the broader debate over social media and youth mental health, but it will give the country its most detailed public accounting yet of what Meta knew, when it knew it, and what it did with that knowledge. For the company, the coming weeks are less a legal proceeding than a test of its standing with the American public — a test with a nine-figure price tag attached to the first question.
