Business judge will not throw out NC suit against TikTok

A North Carolina Business Court judge will allow the state to continue pursuing its lawsuit against TikTok and corporate parent ByteDance. A court order Tuesday denied TikTok’s motions to dismiss the case on various grounds.

“If the State’s allegations are true, ByteDance has intentionally addicted millions of children to a product that is known to disrupt cognitive development, to cause anxiety, depression, and sleep deprivation, and (in the worst cases) to exacerbate the risk of self-harm,” Judge Adam Conrad wrote in a 29-page order. “Federal law does not immunize this conduct, the First Amendment does not bless it, and North Carolina’s laws and courts are not powerless to address it.”

Nearly 1 million North Carolinians from ages 13 to 17 used TikTok as of 2023, Conrad noted.

“TikTok features an array of elements allegedly designed to exploit minors’ developmental immaturity and induce compulsive use,” the judge wrote. “TikTok’s home page (coined the ‘For You Page’) feeds each end user videos that are algorithmically selected to maximize engagement. The algorithm, or recommendation system, performs this task by recording the user’s interactions with the app (such as sharing or skipping a video), identifying behavioral patterns, comparing the user’s behavior with others’, and ranking videos as more or less likely to be engaging based on that comparison. This individualized feed is, in the words of ByteDance employees, ‘addictive.’”

The application’s “design choices allegedly make TikTok addictive to minors in much the same way that, say, roulette is addictive to gamblers,” Conrad wrote.

“The State asserts a single claim, based on TikTok’s design and marketing, for unfair or deceptive trade practices under N.C.G.S. § 75-1.1. It claims that ByteDance unfairly designed TikTok to be addictive to minors despite knowledge that compulsive use harms them. It also claims that ByteDance deceived the public by misrepresenting TikTok’s safety features and Community Guidelines while falsely assuring that the app is safe for young users,” the judge explained.

Conrad rejected TikTok’s arguments that a North Carolina court has no jurisdiction over the complaint. “ByteDance advertises widely in North Carolina, makes TikTok available here, and fosters ongoing relationships with its app’s users. All this adds up to the active, purposeful exploitation of a market in North Carolina,” the judge wrote.

The judge also rejected TikTok’s claim of federal immunity and First Amendment protection.

“ByteDance’s chief argument — that consumers can make a free and informed decision to use or not use TikTok — does not reckon with the complaint’s allegations,” Conrad wrote. “The consumers in this scenario are minors, not mature adults. As alleged, ByteDance designed TikTok to exploit the unique vulnerabilities that accompany youthful immaturity, inducing addictive, compulsive use and depriving minors of a free choice.”

“Worse yet, ByteDance did so allegedly knowing that addiction causes social and psychological harms to minors. Taken as true, these allegations outline practices that are ‘immoral, unethical, oppressive, unscrupulous, or substantially injurious’ under section 75-1.1,” Conrad wrote.

Then-Attorney General Josh Stein filed suit against TikTok in 2024. Current AG Jeff Jackson filed a motion in March defending the state against the motion to dismiss the case.

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