Google, YouTube to Pay $30M to Resolve Children's Privacy Lawsuit
Google and YouTube will pay a combined $30 million to resolve a children's privacy lawsuit that alleged the companies collected personal data and information without consent and used it to deliver targeted ads in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), California privacy laws and other similar state laws (see 2505120037)
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A document containing the settlement was filed Monday at the U.S. District Court of Northern California. The settlement was proposed in May.
The companies made no admission of wrongdoing, the document said, and comes "after almost six years of litigation that included five different judges, multiple challenges to the pleadings, a successful, precedent-setting appeal by plaintiffs to the Ninth Circuit, and discovery."
Case 5:19-cv-07016 began in October 2019 when plaintiff Nichole Hubbard filed a complaint against Google outlining the alleged children's privacy violations. The company responded with a motion to dismiss in January 2020, arguing that COPPA lacks a private right of action. Judge Beth Labson Freeman agreed and dismissed the case in December 2020 (see 2501140087). But the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reinstated the case in 2023.