Meta Lobbied Congress to Insert Lawsuit Immunity into Kids Online Safety Act, Reuters Reports

Since the ongoing wave of youth-safety litigation began consolidating in California state courts, Meta has been working a parallel track in Washington. The company is lobbying Congress to write legal immunity directly into federal statute.

According to Reuters, which reviewed proposed legislative language and spoke with a source familiar with the matter, Meta is seeking provisions that would make online companies immune from suit or liability under state law for claims arising from the safety or privacy of users under 18. The proposed text would be inserted into the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), currently under Senate consideration.

If enacted as written, the provision would preempt state laws on children's online safety and privacy, the exact legal terrain where thousands of existing lawsuits against Meta and other platforms are currently pending.

Courtroom defeat precedes the lobbying push

A Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google's YouTube negligent in a bellwether case, awarding a combined $6 million in damages. The plaintiff, identified in court documents as KGM and referred to as "Kaley" by her legal team, testified alongside high-profile witnesses including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri, according to Breitbart News. TikTok and Snap had settled before trial began. Both Meta and Google have said they plan to appeal, according to Fox Business.

The jury also found that Meta and Google acted with malice or highly egregious conduct, a finding that triggered a separate punitive damages phase. That phase has not concluded as of June 19, 2026, meaning the total financial exposure from this single case alone could grow substantially.

Meta's defense of the language

Meta spokesperson Stephanie Otway pushed back on characterizations of the proposal as blanket immunity. She told Reuters the provision "does not extinguish existing lawsuits" and instead "establishes uniform national standards for online youth safety, ensuring these critical issues are governed by comprehensive federal legislation, not plaintiffs' lawyers or patchwork state legislation."

There is a genuine argument that 50 different state standards create inconsistent obligations for national platforms and that federal preemption can sometimes produce more coherent consumer protections. Some legal scholars have made this point about Section 230 and state tort law.

But Julia Duncan of the American Association for Justice, a plaintiffs' attorney trade group, argued the plain text tells a different story. The wording reviewed by Reuters covers all claims "arising out of, relating to, or resulting from" online youth safety or privacy. That language is broad enough to sweep in the kinds of negligent-design claims Kaley's attorneys brought to trial. Duncan's organization has a financial interest in keeping those suits alive, so her objection should be weighed accordingly. But the legislative text says what it says.

What Congress has actually committed to

Nothing so far. Fox Business noted that no lawmakers have said they would be open to adopting the language. The lobbying effort, as Reuters framed it, reveals what Meta is seeking, not what it has obtained. KOSA itself has had a complicated path through the Senate, having stalled and been revised multiple times in prior sessions.

The strongest concern from critics is structural: the lobbying campaign is happening largely out of public view, and the immunity language is being proposed for insertion into a bill nominally designed to protect children. Parents and child-safety advocates who support KOSA may not realize the version Meta wants signed would simultaneously cap their legal recourse.

The litigation landscape

Beyond the Los Angeles bellwether, thousands of similar claims are consolidated in California state courts, and separate lawsuits have been filed by states and school districts, according to Fox Business. Each operates under state law, precisely the layer Meta's proposed language would eliminate.

StockInvest.us noted Meta shares rose 1.70% and Google's parent Alphabet rose 1.17% on June 19, the day the Reuters report circulated, though the sources do not attribute those moves specifically to the immunity lobbying story.

The unresolved question is whether Senate leadership will allow Meta's proposed immunity text to be attached to KOSA before a vote and whether any senator will publicly disclose that they received the lobbying pitch and how they responded to it.