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Lewisburg Area SD board approves joining national class-action suit against social media companies
Summary
The Lewisburg Area SD board approved a resolution to join a national class-action lawsuit seeking to recover school costs tied to student social-media harms; the district says it would not pay upfront and will quantify related staff costs if the suit succeeds.
The Lewisburg Area School District board voted to approve a resolution to join a national class-action lawsuit against major social media companies, the board said at its regular meeting.
Ben, a district staff member, briefed the board before the vote. “This is a resolution that the district will be joining about 3,000 school districts nationally, in a class action lawsuit, against major social media companies like Aneta and Instagram, Facebook,” Ben said. He said joining would likely include about “40 to 50 school districts” locally and that “the district wouldn't be paying anything to be a part of it.”
The nut graf: the suit aims to recover costs the district links to social-media–related harms among students. Ben said any law firm fees would be paid only from proceeds if the suit is successful; the district would not pay upfront legal fees. “Only if the lawsuit was successful with the law firm, [the firm] be paid out of proceeds from that,” Ben said.
Board discussion focused on quantifying local costs that might be recoverable. Ben said the district will work to estimate costs for additional counselors, social workers, behavior analysts and administrators hired since about 2017. “We need to come up with what some of those salary costs might be. So Kyle and I'll be working on that over the next couple weeks,” Ben said. The resolution to join is the first step, he added.
A motion to approve the resolution was made and seconded; the board approved by voice vote. The motion text on the record was to approve a resolution joining the district to the class-action litigation; no mover or seconder was named in the transcript.
The board did not adopt any further commitments at the meeting. The district indicated it will return with quantified cost estimates for possible recovery if the litigation proceeds.
