Jersey City's Board of Education is set to vote Thursday on whether to bring in three law firms to investigate possible litigation against social media companies, accusing platforms of contributing to harm among students. The same meeting will also include a presentation on spring state testing results for Jersey City students in grades 3 through 9.
The vote, scheduled for the board's November 12 meeting, is covered in a Jersey City Times article, which covers K-12 education issues in the city. If approved, the law firms would probe whether the district has grounds to join the wave of litigation already working its way through courts nationwide, where more than 1,000 other school districts have pending federal lawsuits against four major social media companies, according to Courthouse News Service.
Meta, Snapchat, YouTube and TikTok are among the companies facing thousands of lawsuits in both state and federal court over claims that addictive platform features have harmed children and teens, Reuters reports. Those federal cases, which include suits brought by families, school districts and state governments, have been consolidated before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.
A Mixed Record in the Courts So Far
Jersey City would be entering a legal landscape with uneven results. A California appeals court recently affirmed the dismissal of lawsuits brought by four school districts — in San Diego, California; Vancouver; Brevard County, Florida; and West Warwick, Rhode Island — against Meta, Google, TikTok and Snap over alleged harm to students and school operations, per the same Courthouse News account. A trial judge had already found in 2024 that those four districts failed to establish adequate claims for negligence or public nuisance.
Earlier this year, the companies pushed for an even broader win, urging a California federal judge to rule that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shields them from liability and should block school districts' cases from reaching trial, according to Reuters. That fight centers on six bellwether school-district cases the judge was weighing ahead of federal trials that were slated to begin in June, the outlet reported.
New Jersey Already Has Skin in the Game
Jersey City wouldn't be the first New Jersey district to take this route. Irvington Public Schools was selected as one of six bellwether cases in the federal litigation, joining Harford County Public Schools in Maryland, the DeKalb County School District in Georgia, and the Breathitt County Board of Education in Kentucky, according to the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre. Harford County sued Meta, Google, ByteDance and Snap Inc. in 2023, alleging the companies' addictive products affected nearly 40,000 students, the group reported.
The trend extends well beyond New Jersey. School districts across the country have continued joining the federal litigation over the companies' alleged role in a youth mental health crisis, per the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.
New Jersey has also been examining the issue at the state level. A state commission produced a report titled “Growing Up Online: Findings and Recommendations from the New Jersey Commission on the Effects of Social Media Usage on Adolescents,” dated September 15, 2025, and the state Department of Education collaborated on a 2025 social media impact survey. Whether Jersey City's board ultimately moves forward with litigation, and which firms it might engage, remains to be seen when members take up the matter Thursday.
