{"id":325487,"date":"2026-11-11T12:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T12:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/325487\/"},"modified":"2026-11-11T12:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T12:50:09","slug":"lehigh-county-mulls-lawsuits-against-social-media-companies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/325487\/","title":{"rendered":"Lehigh County mulls lawsuits against social media companies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lehigh County could soon join the list of government entities suing social media companies over their effects on children\u2019s mental health.<\/p>\n<p>The county Board of Commissioners on Tuesday unanimously approved a motion to retain the\u00a0Philadelphia law firm Kline and Specter to investigate and pursue potential claims.<\/p>\n<p>Chair Geoff Brace said litigation could yield money to pay for kids\u2019 mental health treatment in the future, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mcall.com\/2025\/11\/02\/lehigh-county-district-attorney-opiod-settlement-funds\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">similar to the opioid settlements that the commissioners and district attorney negotiated to pay for drug treatment and related programs.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe continue to reap the financial resources to respond to the opioid epidemic as a result of that, and I think what we\u2019re envisioning is something along that line,\u201d Brace said. \u201cBut there\u2019s a lot more work to be done, and that\u2019s why we need a law firm to help us with that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Pennsylvania, along with several other states, won a major settlement against Meta in August after arguing the company designed its platforms, Facebook and Instagram, to attract, engage and addict young users.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mcall.com\/2026\/09\/29\/fighting-techs-influence-on-kids-emerges-as-a-focus-for-pa-attorney-general-dave-sunday-2\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">State Attorney General Dave Sunday said the commonwealth would receive between $516 million and $729 million over the next decade as part of the $17.1 billion deal.<\/a> Meta also agreed to safety features for children, like daily use caps, limited use during school and nighttime hours, and stricter age verifications.<\/p>\n<p>Officials in Bucks and Montgomery counties have also recently filed lawsuits against social media companies, including Meta, TikTok, Google, and Snap, citing their destructive impacts children\u2019s mental health.<\/p>\n<p>The commissioners did not say how much it would cost to retain the law firm, but all no-bid contracts over $25,000 require board approval.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lehigh County could soon join the list of government entities suing social media companies over their effects on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,46,433,182,883,139,28,50,432],"class_list":["post-325487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-courts","tag-lehigh-county","tag-local-news","tag-local-politics","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-politics","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}