California can keep a star witness and introduce key evidence during opening statements in its case against Meta, a federal judge has ruled, dealing a blow to the tech titan on the eve of the landmark trial.
In a brief order Sunday morning, California Northern District Chief Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers formally resolved two key pretrial disputes, handing a pair of procedural victories to the multistate coalition of attorneys general suing the social media giant over claims it designed its products to addict kids and misled the public about their safety.
The states can call whistleblower Arturo Béjar to the stand despite Meta’s claims that he allowed Signal chats with other insiders to auto-delete in defiance of orders to retain them — an issue the judge called a “Hail Mary” by the defense.
“Ultimately, it is obvious that this motion falls into the category of a ‘Hail Mary’ attempt to eliminate a strong witness for the plaintiffs,” Gonzalez Rogers wrote. “The attempt fails.”
The team of attorneys general can also show jurors select evidence to support those claims at opening statements on Tuesday, weeks before most of it enters the record through witness testimony, Gonzalez Rogers ruled.
The dual decision is the latest legal blow to the company, which fought hard to keep the blockbuster suit from reaching a jury and has maneuvered aggressively to restrict what can be introduced as evidence at the trial.
“Many of the identified documents present one or more genuine admissibility disputes, including unresolved hearsay-within-hearsay issues, contested business records arguments, scope-of-employment challenges, Section 230 issues, prejudice concerns, and foundation objections,” Meta’s attorneys wrote in opposition to the move.
The states’ case is the first of thousands of federal actions against the tech giant to reach trial. It comes just months after Meta lost two groundbreaking civil suits in state courts, with juries in Santa Fe, N.M., and Los Angeles agreeing its products were harmful to children in verdicts rendered just hours apart. The company is appealing both cases.
The federal suit seeks one of the largest damage judgments ever rendered, as well as injunctive relief that would dramatically reshape how Meta does business.
“The State AGs may call this a landmark case, but their limited claims are unsubstantiated and their financial demands are vastly disproportionate,” the company said in a statement on Thursday. “Rather than sticking to the facts or the law, the states have instead decided to chase an outlandish payout.”
The company argued in court filings that the states were seeking more than $1 trillion in damages — nearing the company’s total market cap — although more recent reporting has put that number lower.
The trial is set to open just days after a judge in New Mexico doubled down on a jury decision in favor of the attorney general there in March, piling more than $500 million onto the existing $375-million damage award and compelling the company to overhaul its products for young users.
“This is not just a judgment against one company. It is a blueprint,” New Mexico Atty. Gen. Raúl Torrez said in a statement. “For the first time, a court has ruled that a social media giant can be held liable for building products that endanger children and has ordered the structural changes needed to fix it. New Mexico led the way in the courtroom. Now other states, and other countries confronting the same crisis, have a roadmap they can follow.”
Meta has fought aggressively to restrict not only when documents can be introduced in the upcoming federal trial, but how. In a ruling earlier this month, Gonzalez Rogers ordered the company to hand over metadata tying some internal documents to specific people who may have created or handled them — a move that could make it easier to bring those files into evidence.
The company’s move to restrict key witnesses is newer.
Meta’s attempt to nix Béjar from the case came as he was testifying in yet another product liability suit against the company in state court in Nashville — this one brought by Tennessee Atty. Gen. Jonathan Skrmetti.
A former engineer at the company, Béjar has claimed for years that Meta’s child-safety tools were ineffective and that top executives knew its products were harming children. He has crisscrossed the country in recent months to testify in suits against the corporation.
The range and scope of ongoing litigation show how anger at Meta and other social media companies over their products’ effects on kids has spilled into broad bipartisan agreement.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released earlier this month shows 60% of Americans favor more restrictions on social media, while studies by the Pew Research Center and the National Institutes of Health show more than 95% of kids ages 13 to 17 are on the apps — about a third of them “almost constantly” — even as a growing proportion say social media is bad for kids their age and makes them personally unhappy.
But legislation aimed at imposing such restrictions has sputtered as Meta has dramatically scaled up political spending and sunk billions into influencer campaigns to boost its profile and beat back constraints it sees as damaging to its business model.
In that environment, many experts argue court rulings could force change faster.
“For these companies, this is a real point of reckoning,” attorney Laura Marquez-Garrett of the Social Media Victims Law Center said during a press briefing Friday. “This is a leap forward, not a step.”
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