A Texas judge has handed TikTok a significant pretrial loss, finding that the company violated state consumer-protection law by misleading users about how it handled inappropriate content and the effectiveness of its Restricted Mode safety feature.
District Judge Cory Liu granted Texas partial summary judgment on two claims under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Liability on those claims is no longer an issue Texas will have to prove at trial. What remains is the question of relief and penalties.
For lawyers following the Social Media Addiction litigation, the underlying evidence is likely to draw as much attention as the consumer-protection ruling itself. Texas focused on the gap between the safeguards TikTok described publicly and what company employees understood about how those safeguards were actually working.
Thursday’s order does not find that TikTok caused social-media addiction or any particular mental-health injury. Those allegations exist elsewhere in the Texas case and in individual litigation against the platform, but Judge Liu did not decide them here. His ruling is narrower: TikTok’s representations about two aspects of its youth-safety systems did not square with the evidence presented by Texas.
What TikTok Said— And What Texas Found
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued TikTok in January 2025, accusing the company of marketing its platform as appropriate for minors while younger users continued to encounter inappropriate and explicit material.
At issue in one portion of the case were TikTok’s Community Guidelines. Users were told that content violating those guidelines would be removed. Evidence submitted by Texas showed that some prohibited material could instead receive an internal designation of “hard to find” rather than “do not allow.”
Judge Liu found that distinction significant. Material placed in the “hard to find” category could remain on TikTok despite representations that content violating the platform’s guidelines would be removed.
Restricted Mode became the second problem for TikTok. Marketed as an additional safeguard intended to limit exposure to material that may be inappropriate for younger users, the feature had been the subject of concern inside the company.
Internal evidence cited in the litigation indicated TikTok employees knew Restricted Mode was allowing substantial amounts of material through that should have been filtered. Texas argued that the company continued to represent the feature as an effective safety tool despite those shortcomings.
Judge Liu agreed that Texas had established violations of the Deceptive Trade Practices Act on the claims before him.
For lawyers handling youth social-media cases, this is the part of the record worth watching. A malfunctioning or imperfect safety feature is one issue. Evidence that employees understood the limitations of that feature while consumers were receiving a different message presents a considerably different problem in front of a judge or jury.
The Addiction Claims Are a Different Fight
Texas’s complaint reaches beyond inappropriate content and content moderation. Paxton has also accused TikTok of using product features intended to increase engagement among young users and of failing to disclose conduct Texas characterizes as intentionally addictive.
None of that was decided by Thursday’s order.
Misrepresenting the effectiveness of content controls is not the same as proving that TikTok caused addiction, depression, self-harm or another injury claimed in an individual Social Media Addiction case. Plaintiffs pursuing those cases still have to establish the facts surrounding use, exposure, injury and causation.
Even so, government litigation is continuing to produce internal evidence about how these platforms approached younger users and the protections supposedly designed for them. That evidence can have significance well beyond the particular consumer-protection statutes being litigated by a state attorney general.
Tony Buzbee Joins Texas at Trial
Attorney General Ken Paxton brought the case, with lawyers from the Texas Attorney General’s Office working alongside Cooper & Kirk and The Buzbee Law Firm.
Tony Buzbee has been retained as trial counsel for Texas, a name that will be familiar to much of the plaintiff bar. Buzbee has publicly discussed his involvement in the TikTok matter and credited the lawyers working with the state for the work that produced the summary-judgment ruling.
David H. Thompson of Cooper & Kirk is also among the attorneys appearing for Texas, with the firm working alongside Paxton’s office as the case moves into its next phase.
TikTok is represented by attorneys from Covington & Burling and O’Melveny & Myers.
With liability established on the two claims covered by Judge Liu’s order, attention now turns to the relief and penalties available to Texas. The Attorney General’s Office has said that the proceeding is expected next month.
Why This Matters Beyond Texas
For most of the past year, Meta has occupied the center of the youth social-media litigation. Trials and government actions have exposed internal documents and testimony concerning younger users, product design, safety systems and what company executives knew about potential harms.
TikTok is now facing a version of that same evidentiary problem.
Public statements about safety are being compared against internal policies, product decisions and employee communications. In this instance, Texas persuaded a judge that the record was strong enough to establish two consumer-protection violations without requiring a trial on liability.
That does not turn the Texas Attorney General’s case into proof of an individual TikTok addiction claim. It does make the underlying documents and testimony more important to lawyers litigating those claims.
Recent settlements add another layer. TikTok has resolved several individual U.S. cases brought by young users who alleged that social-media products were designed to encourage compulsive use and contributed to mental-health injuries. Those terms remain confidential, while thousands of claims involving TikTok and other platforms continue through state and federal courts.
Against that backdrop, Thursday’s ruling gives plaintiff lawyers another piece of the internal platform record to follow.
Why This Matters
There is no damages number attached to Thursday's ruling, and there may not be one until the next phase of the Texas case. For now, the more interesting development is the record Judge Liu was willing to decide without sending the issue to a fact-finder.
Texas didn't merely survive a motion to dismiss or obtain discovery. It moved for partial summary judgment and established violations of the state's consumer-protection law. That puts the case in a different posture heading into the next proceeding. It also provides another reason for plaintiff lawyers handling Social Media Addiction cases to watch the government litigation alongside the individual injury cases.
Government enforcement actions don't establish medical causation for an individual claimant, but they can expose internal policies, communications, and product decisions that become relevant well beyond the claims being tried in that particular courtroom. Meta has already spent considerable time answering questions about what it knew internally about younger users and safety. TikTok now has its own record to explain.