Meta has quietly asked Congress to grant online platforms legal immunity from lawsuits over harm to children, a move that could wipe out thousands of cases already filed against the company. Meta Platforms has lobbied the U.S. Congress for legal immunity from child-harm claims tied to social media products such as Instagram, as it faces thousands of lawsuits from young users and their families, according to a source familiar with the matter and proposed legislative language reviewed by Reuters on June 18.

The vehicle would be a major children’s-safety bill. If adopted and passed as part of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) under consideration in the Senate, the provision could undermine thousands of lawsuits against Meta and other online platforms over harms to children. The proposed language reviewed by Reuters would make online companies “immune from suit or liability under state law” for claims relating to children’s online safety, and appears alongside language that would preempt state laws on children’s safety and privacy.

The timing is pointed. Meta and Google’s YouTube face a combined $6 million in damages after they lost the first such case at trial earlier this year. A California woman won at trial against Meta and YouTube when her lawyers argued the companies knew features like infinite scrolling were addictive and harmful to youth; the companies plan to appeal. Securing immunity now would head off the wave of similar suits lining up behind it.

Meta is offering the language as a trade. The company proposed it in exchange for dropping its opposition to KOSA, the source said. Meta has previously called for federal standards that would require app stores to verify age and replace state laws on children’s online safety. The bill itself takes the opposite approach to the platforms’ design choices. Under KOSA, companies would be required to exercise care in deploying specific features including infinite scrolling, activity notifications, and appearance-altering photo filters.

So far, the sponsors are not biting. KOSA is sponsored by Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, and a Blackburn spokesperson, asked about the specific liability provision, said: “We have not seen that proposed language and would never consider it.” Legislators have given no indication of adopting Meta’s language.

Critics say the stakes could not be higher for families. Julia Duncan of the American Association for Justice, which represents trial lawyers, said the provision would knock out any lawsuits pending when the law took effect, calling it “pretty clear-cut immunity against every parent, every school district, that is seeking to hold any AI or social media company accountable for harm” to children.

The fight is part of a larger legislative scramble. The bill is now wrapped into negotiations between Blackburn and the White House to package child-safety measures with a provision that would preempt some state laws on artificial intelligence — a separate but related effort by the tech industry to replace a patchwork of state rules with a lighter federal standard. The lobbying shows the kind of legal protection Meta is seeking amid the biggest attempt to regulate online platforms in the United States since the 1990s.

There is history here, too. KOSA passed the Senate in a 91-3 vote in 2024 but failed in the House, and its revival has reopened the same questions about how far Washington should go in policing how platforms are built for young users.

For Meta, the business logic is straightforward. The thousands of pending suits represent open-ended legal and financial exposure, and a single immunity clause tucked into popular safety legislation would resolve it in one stroke. Meta declined to comment on the lobbying effort.

For everyone else, the episode is a window into how high-stakes tech policy actually gets made — not in open debate over a single bill, but in the fine print traded behind closed doors, where a provision a sponsor says she would “never consider” can still end up shaping whether families ever get their day in court. The outcome will determine not just Meta’s liability, but whether parents, schools, and states retain the power to sue when they believe a platform’s design hurt a child.

JBizNews Desk | Washington

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