The Mesa Public Schools Governing Board gave the green light on Tuesday
to allow its lawyers to work with outside attorneys to file a
multidistrict lawsuit against companies like Facebook, TikTok and
YouTube. This is just one of many steps before an official lawsuit is
filed.
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Posted: Jan 27, 2023
Posted: Jan 26, 2023
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". . Like the Seattle complaint, it posts a few cherry-picked studies claiming that social media is bad for kids, and ignores more comprehensive studies that argue that opposite. Like the Seattle complaint, it goes hard in proving that Mesa public schools apparently are staffed by administrators and teachers who suck at educating children, and find themselves powerless against… entertainmen
In short, it’s pathetic.The one main “difference” between the Seattle complaint and the Mesa one is that in Mesa they’ve added a “negligence” claim, saying that social media companies “owe” the school district “a duty not to expose Plaintiff to an unreasonable risk of harm….”
This is all laughably stupid, and not at all how the law works
Now Mesa Public Schools Are Also Declaring That They Have Failed In Educating Their Children By Suing Social Media
from the this-makes-it-a-trend dept
"Last week, we wrote about the positively ridiculous lawsuit filed by the Seattle Public School district against basically all of social media claiming social media was “a public nuisance.” As we noted, the school district appeared to be wasting taxpayer money, that could have gone to educating their kids, on this lawsuit that screamed out to the public that the school district had totally failed in educating their children how to be good digital citizens, how to use the internet properly, and how to be prepared for living life in the age of the internet.
And, now it appears that the Mesa, Arizona school district has decided to do the same thing. Using the same lawyers. The law offices of Keller Rohrback appears to be trying to carve out this corner of the market as their own: having public school districts waste a shitload of time and resources to publicly proclaim that they can’t prepare the children they’re in charge of educating for the modern internet world.
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The Mesa complaint is, not surprisingly, similar to the Seattle complaint. It’s suing the same companies (really: Meta, Google, Snap, Tiktok). Like the Seattle complaint, it argues that social media is a “public nuisance.” Like the Seattle complaint, it says that Section 230 doesn’t protect the companies (it’s wrong). Like the Seattle complaint, it posts a few cherry-picked studies claiming that social media is bad for kids, and ignores more comprehensive studies that argue that opposite. Like the Seattle complaint, it goes hard in proving that Mesa public schools apparently are staffed by administrators and teachers who suck at educating children, and find themselves powerless against… entertainment.
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✓ In short, it’s pathetic.
The one main “difference” between the Seattle complaint and the Mesa one is that in Mesa they’ve added a “negligence” claim, saying that social media companies “owe” the school district “a duty not to expose Plaintiff to an unreasonable risk of harm….”
This is all laughably stupid, and not at all how the law works. I mean, it’s possible that the lawyers at Keller Rohrback figure that if they file enough of these lawsuits, eventually they’ll find a judge who lets the moral panic of “social media is bad for kids” overwhelm the actual legal issues, but it’s difficult to see it standing up to any legitimate judicial scrutiny.
Of course, now that we have these two lawsuits, it means it’s almost certain that they’re shopping for similar lawsuits. One hopes that other school districts will reject this nonsense. The whole point of these lawsuits is almost certainly to try to shake down the social media companies to get them to settle, but that seems unlikely.
Either way, if you’re a parent of a student in the Mesa public schools, you should be asking why your school’s administrators seem to be publicly admitting that they can’t teach your children how to deal with the modern internet world."
Filed Under: mesa, public nuisance, school district, schools, social media
Companies: bytedance, facebook, google, instagram, keller rohrback, meta, snapchat, tiktok, youtube
Posted: Jan 27, 2023
Posted: Jan 26, 2023
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