An appeals court has revived a lawsuit accusing Google, YouTube, DreamWorks and a handful of toy makers of tracking the activity on YouTube of children under the age of 13. Protection Act does not prohibit lawsuits based on the privacy laws of individual states.
COPPA, passed in 1998 and amended in 2012, requires websites to obtain parental consent before collecting and disseminating personally identifiable information from children under the age of 13. COPPA gives the FTC and attorneys general the ability to investigate and impose fines for violations of the law.
Several states in the US have laws similar to COPPA on the books. The revived lawsuit cites laws in California, Colorado, Indiana and Massachusetts to allege that Hasbro, DreamWorks, Mattel and Cartoon Network illegally lured children onto their YouTube channels to target them with ads.
A federal judge in San Francisco dismissed the original lawsuit, ruling that COPPA prohibits individuals from suing companies for privacy violations. In a unanimous decision, the Ninth Circuit judges hearing the appeal disagreed with the district court’s reasoning. In fact, COPPA is not the only way to enforcement, according to the ruling.
“Since the blocking of ‘inconsistent’ state laws implicitly enforces ‘consistent’ substantive state laws, it would be nonsensical to assume that Congress intended to simultaneously preclude all legal remedies for violations of those laws,” Justice Margaret McKeown wrote.
This isn’t the first time YouTube has run into legal trouble over its handling of children’s data. The Alphabet subsidiary was fined $170 million in 2019 by the FTC and the New York State Attorney General for COPPA violations.
The case, which seeks damages for a period of seven years between 2013 and 2020, is now going back to court.
