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Bladen County Board votes to join national lawsuit accusing social platforms of harming students
Summary
Trustees approved a contingency retainer to join nationwide litigation alleging major social platforms design features that harm children; the firm said there is no upfront cost and would be paid only if the district recovers money.
The Bladen County Board of Education voted Oct. 13 to approve a contingency retainer enabling the district to join nationwide litigation against major social-platform companies over harms to students and resulting costs to schools.
Stella Pratt, an attorney representing multiple school districts, told trustees the litigation targets Meta (Facebook/Instagram), Snap (Snapchat), ByteDance (TikTok) and Google (YouTube). Pratt said the cases allege those companies "designed their platforms to be addicting to children" and that school districts have borne added costs for mental-health services, security and classroom disruptions.
"They're designed them to be addicting to children," Pratt said during her presentation. She described the litigation as a multi-district effort: national test cases are handling most pretrial work while participating districts provide a complaint and a short set of background materials. Pratt said the firm operates on a contingency basis and that there would be "no fees" charged to the district unless it recovers funds.
Board members asked about litigation risks and potential discovery burdens; Pratt said the MDL structure centralizes heavy litigation tasks and that local district participation mainly requires approving a complaint and answering basic background questions about budgets and policies. She also addressed a concern about potential local costs should a district be removed as a client; Pratt said in her experience the firm has not fired a client and that the filing cost in federal court would be minimal (she cited filing fees in the low hundreds of dollars).
Motion and vote: after debate a motion to approve the retainer and join the national litigation was moved and seconded; the board conducted an individual roll-call-style voice vote and the motion carried.
Context: other North Carolina districts and dozens of districts nationwide are participating in similar suits; the Wake County and other high-profile settlements in prior school-related litigation were discussed as potential comparators during Q&A.
Next steps: administration will finalize the paperwork and provide the district's background responses to the firm; any recovery would be allocated according to the terms set out in the litigation matrix and the firm's contingency agreement.
Sources: Presentation and Q&A with attorney Stella Pratt at the Oct. 13 board meeting.
