By Gerald L. Maatman, Jr., Justin R. Donoho, and Hayley Ryan
Duane Morris Takeaways: On September 23, 2026, in the case of In Re TikTok, Inc., Minor Privacy Litigation, No. MDL 25-3144, ECF No. 414 (C.D. Cal. Sept. 23, 2026), Judge George H. Wu of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California issued a tentative ruling (adopted as final on September 24, 2026) denying TikTok’s motion to dismiss the Second Amended Consolidated Class Action Complaint in a multidistrict litigation brought by minors alleging that TikTok collected, shared, and exploited their personal information without parental consent in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”) and related state laws.
The ruling is significant because it rejected TikTok’s argument that two prior nationwide class action settlements – totaling over $93 million combined – barred the plaintiffs’ claims, holding that the record at the pleadings stage did not establish the named plaintiffs’ membership in those prior settlement classes. For companies that have previously settled class actions, the decision underscores the risk that broad settlement releases may not foreclose subsequent litigation where class membership is not clearly established on the face of the pleadings.
Background
This case is one of a series of privacy class actions targeting TikTok and its parent companies, ByteDance Inc. and ByteDance Ltd. The plaintiffs are minors who allege that while under the age of 13, their personal information was collected, shared, and exploited by TikTok without the parental notice and consent COPPA requires for children under 13. The plaintiffs seek to impose liability stretching back to March 28, 2019.
Two prior nationwide settlements form the backdrop of the dispute. The first, T.K. v. Bytedance Technology Co., No. 1:19-CV-07915 (N.D. Ill.), followed the FTC’s 2019 enforcement action concerning COPPA violations by Musical.ly, TikTok’s predecessor, and settled for $1.1 million on behalf of approximately 6 million individuals who used Musical.ly or TikTok before August 22, 2022, while under the age of 13. The settlement included a broad release but no injunctive relief. The second, In Re TikTok, Inc., Consumer Privacy Litigation, No. 1:20-CV-04699 (N.D. Ill.) (the “Privacy MDL”), consolidated lawsuits focused on TikTok’s use of algorithms, facial recognition, and other technologies to collect and transfer personally identifiable user data to servers in China, and settled for $92 million with broad injunctive relief.
In April 2025, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation ordered the transfer of the present actions to the Central District of California. After an initial partial dismissal of claims brought under laws of states without a domiciled plaintiff, the plaintiffs amended, and the defendants moved to dismiss the Second Amended Consolidated Class Action Complaint (“Complaint”), arguing that the T.K. and Privacy MDL settlements barred claims for conduct occurring before August 22, 2022, the cutoff date defining the later T.K. settlement class. The dispositive question was therefore whether the pleadings themselves established that the named plaintiffs fell within those prior settlement classes.
The Court’s Decision
The Court denied TikTok’s motion to dismiss, finding that the defendants failed to establish, on the record available at the pleadings stage, that the named plaintiffs were members of the T.K. class. ECF No. 414 at 8-9.
At the heart of the ruling was a straightforward factual gap. The T.K. settlement class included individuals who used TikTok or Musical.ly before August 22, 2022, while under the age of 13. Id. However, the Complaint did not allege the birth dates or first-use dates of any of the named plaintiffs – it alleged only that the plaintiffs were under 13 and used TikTok during the Class Period, defined as March 28, 2019, to the present. Id. at 9. The Court held that these allegations did not establish when within that period the plaintiffs used TikTok, and the judicially noticed materials likewise did not supply that information. Id.
Even assuming none of the plaintiffs opted out of the prior settlements, the Court found that the defendants still had not shown the plaintiffs belonged to the prior classes in the first place. Id. As the Court stated, “[a] person need not opt out of a class to which that person never belonged.” Id.
The Court also rejected TikTok’s argument that plaintiffs should not be allowed to avoid res judicata simply by “artfully pleading around” the relevant facts. Id. Because a plaintiff’s failure to anticipate and plead around an affirmative defense is not a pleading deficiency, as the Supreme Court explained in Jones v. Bock, 549 U.S. 199 (2007), the Court concluded that even plaintiffs who knew these defenses were coming, and knew their own ages and use histories, were not required to plead around TikTok’s affirmative defenses of release and preclusion, provided they otherwise sufficiently pleaded their causes of action. Id. at 10.
The Court further rejected TikTok’s alternative argument that, regardless of membership in the prior classes, plaintiffs either were precluded from, or lacked Article III standing to pursue, claims for the pre-August 2022 period. Id. TikTok reasoned that uncertainty about whether the named plaintiffs were under 13 and used TikTok before August 22, 2022, does not prevent dismissal because plaintiffs who meet those criteria are bound by the prior settlements, while plaintiffs who did not use TikTok during the relevant period cannot recover for that period and lack standing to represent those who did. Id. The Court disagreed. The Court held that once a named plaintiff establishes individual standing, differences in injuries between the named plaintiffs and absent class members go to class certification rather than standing, the distinction drawn by the Ninth Circuit in Melendres v. Arpaio, 784 F.3d 1254 (9th Cir. 2015). Id. at 11. As the Court explained, “[w]hether Plaintiffs can represent class members who experienced that conduct earlier in the proposed Class Period concerns their representative capacity under Rule 23, and the possibility that Plaintiffs used TikTok only after August 22, 2022, does not defeat their standing to pursue the alleged claims.” Id. The Court likewise declined to redefine the class period at the pleading stage, holding that the issue is more appropriately addressed at class certification. Id.
After oral argument on September 24, 2026, the Court adopted its tentative ruling as the final ruling. See ECF No. 416.
Implications For Companies
This decision provides important guidance for any company facing follow-on privacy and/or adtech class action litigation after a prior settlement, by showing that broad settlement releases cannot be enforced at the motion-to-dismiss stage unless the defendant can demonstrate from the pleadings alone that the current plaintiffs were members of the prior class. That is a high bar where the operative complaint does not specify individual plaintiffs’ ages or first-use dates, or other identifying information necessary to determine membership.
Of course, preclusion based on prior settlements is just one tool in a defendant’s kit for defeating class certification in privacy and adtech cases. For example, in the related case of In Re TikTok, Inc., Consumer Privacy Litigation, 713 F. Supp. 3d 470 (N.D. Ill. 2024), the court declined to dismiss in-app browser claims on the basis of the prior $92 million settlement but left the door open to a different result upon further discovery. Id. at 501-02. There, the court observed that “the unusual and as-yet-undisclosed manner and method of the Original Plaintiffs’ post-settlement investigation leaves open the possibility that further information might alter this conclusion — for example, evidence that they recognized both the in-app browser’s risks and the potential to use them as the basis for a wiretapping theory of liability, but deliberately chose not to pursue this opportunity,” adding that “[s]uch evidence would be worth further attention, if not a different result.” Id. at 501. The court reinforced this point by noting that the original plaintiffs’ source code expert had been given “free rein to probe TikTok’s relevant technology” during confirmatory discovery. Id. at 499. Defendants facing successive adtech class actions should accordingly pursue targeted discovery into prior expert analyses and internal communications reflecting awareness of the privacy risks at issue — evidence that, under the court’s reasoning in In Re TikTok, Inc., Consumer Privacy Litigation, could compel preclusion of theories that were available but not pursued in the earlier proceeding.