NY TikTok Addiction Case Hinges on State’s Standing to Sue

New York’s lawsuit against TikTok could have a ripple effect on other states looking to hold social media companies accountable for addicting children, if the state is able to convince a Manhattan appellate court it has standing to sue on behalf of its young residents.

The state’s case brings similar arguments to two trials that played out recently in Los Angeles and New Mexico. In the former, Meta and Google were found negligent for designing and operating platforms that are addictive to young users and ordered to pay $6 million to the individual plaintiff. The New York case is different in that it’s about the state, rather than individual users of the platform, seeking to hold the company accountable.

A ruling against TikTok on the standing issue in the New York case could “signal to courts nationwide that state enforcement actions targeting addictive platform design are viable over objections that individual users should sue on their own,” said Yunsieg P. Kim, associate professor of law at Hofstra University’s Maurice A. Deane School of Law.

Just two weeks ago, New Mexico succeeded in its suit to hold Meta accountable under state law for misleading teenagers about the safety of its social networks and exposing them to potential sexual predators. A 12-person jury on March 24 awarded the state civil penalties totaling $375 million.

TikTok argues that New York lacks standing to sue on behalf of its residents; only individuals who have been harmed can bring claims. It’s a central argument that could give the state’s First Appellate Department a basis to throw out the case, said Fordham School of Law professor Benjamin C. Zipursky.

“The fact they’re trying to protect children and children can’t always fight for themselves, and the fact that they’re looking for injunctive relief—those are said to be reasons why the appellate division should affirm” and make it fall under the exception category, Zipursky said, noting that it is less common but not unprecedented for a state to bring such claims on behalf of residents.

Judges will also grapple with whether the state’s arguments are about the content posted on TikTok—in which case the company could be immune from liability under federal law—or the design of the platform and its algorithms, a topic tackled by another New York appellate court last year.

Consumer Protection

TikTok argues there’s no precedent that gives New York third-party standing to bring products liability claims on behalf of individuals to target an online platform for its decisions on what content to publish and how to publish it.

The trial court in May rejected that argument, saying during oral arguments that the state adequately “alleges a quasi-sovereign interest, in that the actions of TikTok threatened the health and welfare of the citizens of the State of New York, and particularly of young users.”

The standing issue is important but it’s not necessarily “dispositive one way or the other,” Kim said. New York law gives Attorney General Letitia James (D) broad authority to take action against fraudulent or illegal business conduct, giving the state “a substantial statutory foothold here,” he said.

Another key question is whether the social media platform is a tangible product for the purpose of product liability law.

James argues that New York has no bright-line rule for what is or is not a product, while TikTok argues it’s an intangible online platform that publishes intangible content.

In the Los Angeles case, the judge concluded the social media platforms aren’t products but that they could still proceed to trial under negligence claims.

“In this social media litigation, it’s all about saying how bad these companies were and that they knew there were these risks. So you don’t need product liability law,” Zipursky said.

Section 230

Another issue likely to receive significant attention, Kim said, is TikTok’s argument that the state’s case is barred by Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which protects platforms from being held liable for publishing third-party content.

A New York appellate court in Albany last year sided with social media companies and declined to limit protections under section 230 when it dismissed Meta, Google, and Reddit from a lawsuit claiming they’re liable for a 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo.

But in that case, unlike the TikTok suit, “the alleged harms and their alleged sources were more directly tied to particular online content, namely, racist and other extremist content calling for violence,” said Jonathan Cedarbaum, professor of practice at the George Washington University Law School.

The trial court said TikTok failed to recognize the suit isn’t about content, but rather “a cocktail of design features that are unique to the TikTok product, and alleged to cause harm to young people.”

If judges signal that they see the case “primarily through a deceptive-practices lens, that could provide a pathway that sidesteps the Section 230 debate entirely,” Kim said.

“I would listen for whether judges press the AG on the specificity of the alleged deception—what exactly TikTok represented, to whom, and when—because that framing is the AG’s strongest ground and the one most independent of the Section 230 question,” Kim added.

The case is New York v. TikTok Inc., N.Y. App. Div., 1st Dep’t, No. 2025-04146, oral argument scheduled 4/8/26.