Summary: Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti leads lawsuit Meta researchers flagged teen harm from Instagram features New Mexico jury previously ordered Meta to pay $375 million Attorneys for the state of Tennessee told a jury in Nashville on July 27 that Meta Platforms' leadership disregarded internal research about its Instagram platform's impact on teenagers as the company sought to maximize profit from young users. During opening statements in a seven-week trial in state court in Tennessee, the state's lawyers said Meta researchers repeatedly flagged that some teenagers were compulsively using the platform, leading to eating disorders, depression and self-harm. But despite those warnings, Meta did not disable features such as autoplay, notifications and infinite scroll that, the lawyers said, were designed to keep teens on Instagram as long as possible and increase the number of ads they viewed. An attorney for Meta countered that the company has been transparent about the risks teens face on Instagram and the amount of dangerous content that it finds. The company works hard to find problems and fix them, he said. The lawsuit, filed by Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti's office, seeks financial penalties and a court order directing Instagram to modify aspects of the platform that the state says are harmful to teens' mental health. If the jury finds the company liable, the trial will enter a second phase before Chancellor Russell Perkins, the judge overseeing the trial, who will decide whether to order the company to pay financial penalties and make changes to Instagram to make it safer for teens. During the opening statements, which Reuters watched on Courtroom View Network, Tom Cartmell, a lawyer for the state, played the familiar dinging sound of a notification hitting a smartphone. Unpredictable rewards like notifications trigger dopamine hits that promote addiction, which has a particularly strong impact on the brains of kids, Cartmell said. Meta understood the brain science behind why teens find its platform so irresistible, Cartmell said. Cartmell showed the jury an internal document from 2017 in which Meta product managers wrote that features like notifications and infinite scroll “are inherently at odds with well-being” and said that the company needed to warn the public. “This warning never came,” Cartmell said. Kevin Huff, a lawyer for Meta, said documents like those Cartmell cited are proof that the company is searching for problems on its platforms, so it can improve them. The company has developed tools to help limit problematic use of Instagram, and seeks to empower teachers and parents to help keep teens safe, Huff said. Huff urged jurors to consider whether Meta should bear sole responsibility for societal problems such as suicide, child exploitation and addiction. "We think the evidence will show that Meta is doing its part and empowering others to do their part, because protecting teens online is a shared responsibility. It takes a village." Nearly every state in the country has filed claims against Meta over its platforms' alleged impact on children. More than two dozen of the lawsuits have been consolidated in multidistrict litigation in San Francisco, while many other states have sued in their own courts. Separately, Meta and other social media companies are facing thousands of lawsuits brought by individuals and school districts. Tennessee's lawsuit is the second state case to reach a jury. Earlier this year, a jury in New Mexico found the company liable and ordered it to pay $375 million. A judge is weighing additional financial penalties as well as an order directing the company to change Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp in the state.

Summary: 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issues 2-1 ruling Judge Indira Talwani's injunction upheld against Trump order Coalition of 23 states led by California and Massachusetts A federal appeals court on July 25 declined to allow U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to implement in 23 states his executive order that aims to tighten rules for mail-in voting ahead of November elections that will decide control of Congress. The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the administration's request to lift an injunction several Democratic-led states secured on June 25 from a lower-court judge who concluded that key parts of the Republican president's order were unconstitutional. In asking the court to pause U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani's ruling while it pursues an appeal, the U.S. Department of Justice had argued that because government agencies had yet to finalize actions and policies to implement Trump's directive, any lawsuit challenging his order was premature. The appeals court, in a 2-1 ruling, rejected that argument. "As the district court reasoned, the (executive order) lays out a clear set of rapidly approaching deadlines by which states must coordinate with federal officials and comply with new voting procedures — all while the states must also ensure that their officials and the public understand the evolving set of rules that would govern the upcoming September and November elections," the judges wrote. "The Plaintiff States have no practical choice but to respond to the (order) now." Before Talwani ruled, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., rejected a related effort by Democrats to block Trump's order on similar grounds. The Justice Department warned that absent a ruling in its favor from the 1st Circuit, it may be forced to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. Trump signed the executive order in March after years of calling for tighter rules on voting by mail and pushing the false claim that his 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread voter fraud. Under the U.S. Constitution, states are assigned the role of administering federal elections. That order came on top of other efforts by Trump to overhaul elections. He has made winning approval in Congress of a divisive package of voting restrictions called the SAVE America Act a priority. Judges have blocked an earlier executive order he signed requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and restricting the counting of mail ballots. But Talwani, in siding with a coalition of 23 states and the District of Columbia that was led by California, Massachusetts, Nevada and Washington state, said the president lacked any authority to direct DHS to compile voter eligibility lists for each state to use and that USPS had no statutory authorization to adopt any binding regulations on mail-in voting. The judge said Trump also could not attempt through his order "to intimidate local election officials to use the necessarily incomplete confirmed citizenship lists as a resource, lest they face criminal prosecution."

Summary: Lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan Taylor Farms recalled iceberg lettuce amid Cyclospora outbreak Plaintiffs seek at least $75,000 in damages plus fees A Michigan couple has sued Taco Bell and Taylor Farms in federal court after they recently contracted cyclosporiasis, alleging the companies are responsible for them contracting the parasitic illness after eating shredded iceberg lettuce from a restaurant location in Durand. Cyclosporiasis is a parasitic illness. The most common symptom is frequent, watery and explosive diarrhea. The infections have been linked to iceberg lettuce in five states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The lawsuit, filed July 17 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, accuses Taylor Farms of not taking adequate food safety steps to prevent contamination by fecal matter that can lead to Cyclospora contamination. The company also should have known about the risk because of a 2013 Cyclospora outbreak and a 2024 E. coli outbreak, both associated with Taylor Farms produce, the case claims. The plaintiffs are residents of Durand, in Shiawassee County, according to the lawsuit. The complaint alleges Taco Bell also bears responsibility for the illnesses because the company has control over the restaurant's food safety standards, including how it is stored and prepared, and suppliers it uses. The filing also accuses Taco Bell of continuing to sell contaminated produce until the company removed iceberg lettuce from some restaurants during investigation of the Cyclospora outbreak. Taylor Farms issued a voluntary recall July 17 of iceberg lettuce products. Ryan Osterholm, a partner at the Minnesota-based firm OFT representing the plaintiffs, said the goal of the litigation is to help shed light on how this outbreak unfolded to reduce the chance another will happen. He said his firm represents more than 100 clients in Michigan who have gotten sick with cyclosporiasis, though lawsuits have not been filed in all those instances. Cases have now been reported in 70 of Michigan's 82 counties, the state health department said. Officials said the state's total number of cyclosporiasis cases had reached more than 7,600 by Thursday. Michigan and Ohio appear to be leading the national outbreak, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which said earlier this week has received reports of more than 4,100 lab-confirmed cases of the illness and knows of more than 7,400 cases that are not lab-confirmed. The case asks for damages of at least $75,000 and other costs, interest and attorney fees. The lawsuit does not say whether the plaintiffs may have eaten lettuce from other sources that also use Taylor Farms as a supplier. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said as of July 19, the agency had not confirmed any positive results for samples of Taylor Farms lettuce tested for Cyclospora. An earlier test sample had yielded a false positive result, according to the USDA.