Products Liability Law Daily Wrap Up, DESIGN AND MANUFACTURING DEFECTS—ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS—9th Cir.: Claims against Meta largely dismissed in user’s sex trafficking case, (Nov 6, 2026)

By Pankhuri Bhatnagar, B.A. LL.B.

Only the victim’s design defect theory alleging inadequate mechanisms for reporting sex trafficking survived as it did not require monitoring third-party content, while the other claims were barred.

In an action brought against a social media platform by a sex-trafficking victim for allegedly facilitating and failing to warn about the risks of sex trafficking, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part the dismissal of the victim’s claims. Her claims for civil sex trafficking, design defect, and failure to warn were found to be barred by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act because reviewing user profiles and conducting identity and age verification would implicate the platform’s role as a publisher, and the platform had no duty to warn of the general possibility of other users using Instagram for criminal purposes (Jane Doe (K.B.) v. Facebook, Inc., No. 25-2246 (9th Cir. Nov. 3, 2026)).

Background. In 2012, a minor girl was contacted by an adult man on Instagram, a social media platform owned by Meta Platforms, Inc. She was lured for an offline meeting, beaten, assaulted, and repeatedly sold for unlawful sex acts over the course of a year. She was later rescued by law enforcement and the man was criminally convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison. She then brought suit against Facebook, Inc., Meta Platforms Inc., (together, Meta or platform) and Backpage.com LLC, alleging that the platforms knowingly facilitated and profited from human trafficking, with Backpage serving as the marketplace for the illicit advertisements and Meta utilizing defective algorithmic designs that actively connected predators with vulnerable minors. However, her civil sex-trafficking claim under 18 U.S.C. § 1595 and product-liability claims for design defects and failure to warn against Meta were dismissed by a federal court in California based on Section 230 immunity. The victim appealed the application of the statute.

Legal standard. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunizes a provider or user of an interactive computer service from liability when the plaintiff seeks to treat it as the publisher or speaker of information provided by another information content provider. Barnes v. Yahoo!, Inc., 570 F.3d 1096, 1100-01 (9th Cir. 2009). The inquiry requires examining each cause of action to determine whether the plaintiff’s theory of liability treats the defendant as a publisher or speaker of third-party content. Doe v. Grindr Inc., 128 F.4th 1148, 1151 (9th Cir. 2025).

Trafficking. The victim alleged that Meta failed to ban sex traffickers from Instagram and take reasonable steps to abate trafficking. The court explained that a platform’s failure to review user-created profiles to prevent unlawful content from being published was “precisely the kind of activity for which Congress intended to grant absolution with the passage of [S]ection 230.” Fair Hous. Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com, LLC, 521 F.3d 1157, 1171–72 (9th Cir. 2008). The theory that Instagram’s recommendation algorithms connected sex traffickers with vulnerable users was also rejected because reframing the claim as one concerning connection algorithms rather than the user-generated content those algorithms facilitate did not avoid Section 230 immunity. Dyroff v. Ultimate Software Group, Inc., 934 F.3d 1093, 1098 (9th Cir. 2019). Contrary to her contention, the Supreme Court’s decision in Moody v. NetChoice, LLC, 603 U.S. 707 (2024) did not overrule Dyroff. Accordingly, Section 230 barred the civil sex-trafficking claim under Section 1595.

Design defect. The woman’s design-defect claim rested on two distinct theories, that Meta failed to require identity and age verification during account creation and that it failed to provide adequate mechanisms for reporting sex trafficking and tools enabling an immediate response. The former theory was barred because verification requirements implicated Meta’s publication role by deciding whether to publish or withdraw third-party content. Barnes, 570 F.3d at 1102. However, the second theory survived Section 230 immunity. As held in Doe 1 v. Twitter, Inc., 148 F.4th 635, 645 (9th Cir. 2025), improving a platform’s reporting mechanism would not necessarily require monitoring third-party content and therefore would not impose liability based on its publishing function. The same reasoning applied to Meta’s alleged failure to provide adequate reporting infrastructure.

Failure to warn. Finally, the woman alleged that Instagram failed to warn users that sex trafficking was prevalent on the platform, that interactions with traffickers were a foreseeable product use, and that fake accounts could facilitate trafficking. This count was again barred because the alleged duty to warn arose from Meta’s role as a publisher of third-party content. In Grindr, the Ninth Circuit rejected a similar failure-to-warn claim concerning the general risk of child sexual exploitation on an application, where the defendant had no independent knowledge of a conspiracy. 128 F.4th at 1154. The court distinguished Doe v. Internet Brands, Inc., 824 F.3d 846 (9th Cir. 2016), which involved a defendant’s actual knowledge, from an outside source, of a conspiracy operating independently of its publishing function. Accordingly, the lower court’s judgment was largely affirmed.

The case is No. 25-2246.

Judge: Per curiam.

Attorneys: Walter Simons (Bracewell, LLP) for Jane Doe. Kristin Andrea Linsley (Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP) for Facebook, Inc.

Companies: Facebook, Inc.

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