Theo Wells-Spackman is a Report for America corps member who reports for VTDigger.

Vermont officials can continue a consumer protection lawsuit against Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, the U.S. Supreme Court has indicated. 

In a brief, unexplained order last week, the nation’s highest court elected not to take up Meta’s bid to avoid Vermont’s long-running lawsuit. The move allows state officials to continue their legal offensive against the tech giant in Chittenden Superior Court.

“This is a critical moment,” said Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark in an interview Monday. “It would be contrary to our system of justice if people who were operating in the online marketplace were judgment proof.”

Clark sued Meta in 2023, in coordination with a number of similar lawsuits in state and federal courts across the country. Vermont’s 117-page complaint argued that the media corporation had violated the Vermont Consumer Protection Act by keeping users in the dark about its platforms’ harmful impacts on kids.

The suit argued that the social media platforms are purpose-built to cause compulsive use, citing studies illustrating harms to youth that such use can breed: mental health issues, altered psychological development, eating disorders and more. Many of those effects are particularly pronounced among young girls using the apps, Clark said.

Attorneys for Meta have fought back hard, questioning not just the substance of Clark’s suit but Vermont’s ability to sue the corporation in this way at all. The company has repeatedly argued that since it doesn’t have a substantial physical presence in the state, nor are its products aimed at Vermonters in particular, Clark’s office doesn’t have jurisdiction to bring the company into state court on consumer protection allegations.

Vermont’s highest court rejected that idea in strong terms last August. Meta purposefully made use of the state’s user base for its own economic gain, the justices said, and can be held to account accordingly. The decision did note, however, that the U.S. Supreme Court had not fully resolved the issue.

But when Meta took its appeal a step further, bringing the jurisdiction issue to the U.S. Supreme Court last fall, company lawyers ultimately got nowhere. Last week, the court denied the company’s petition to review the issue — an unelaborated rejection that places the case back in the hands of Vermont’s court system. Clark’s office is seeking hefty financial penalties for the company and mandated transparency surrounding the harms its services can cause, among other measures. 

Ellen P. Goodman, a law professor who co-founded the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy & Law, said that holding social media companies culpable for consumer outcomes is still an emerging area of the law. A federal law protecting platforms from liability for harms stemming from users’ content has historically made companies like Meta hard to sue in such cases, she said. 

But several recent state suits along similar lines to Clark’s have pierced that “shield,” Goodman said, referring to two state jury decisions last month that cost Meta and YouTube millions.

Last week’s move by the U.S. Supreme Court may further embolden state attorneys general, and even individuals, who are considering similar consumer protection suits against internet companies, Goodman said.

Tejas Narechania, who directs the University of California, Berkeley Center for Law and Technologies, said the decision may also speed along existing cases, where lower courts were keeping an ear out for word from above.

But he and other experts also urged a cautious reading of the U.S. Supreme Court’s order.

“It’s important to not put too much weight on this one signal,” Narechania said in an email. “The Court might decide to revisit this issue later, or might want to wait and see how other courts resolve it.”

For the time being, Clark said she’s glad to be able to continue the case against Meta in state court rather than joining, for example, a multistate federal challenge. She said she wanted her office to control the strategy, timing and priorities of the suit. Vermont’s original complaint also relied on an investigation the attorney general’s office conducted into Meta’s actions in Vermont specifically.

“I also feel, frankly, very confident in the judges in this state,” Clark added.

Clark’s office is already engaged in a similar consumer protection lawsuit against TikTok, and the attorney general said she “wouldn’t hesitate to bring another lawsuit if a company was doing something harmful against Vermont’s children.”

A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment on the case Tuesday.