There have been a series of school districts (Seattle, Mesa, Bucks County) who have filed silly lawsuits against social media for "harming kids" arguing it's a "public nuisance."

But last week, San Mateo schools (in the heart of Silicon Valley), the board of education who oversees MY KIDS' schools filed by far the dumbest of these lawsuits, claiming social media is engaged in RICO!

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/03/21/silicon-valley-school-district-files-laughable-vexatious-rico-claims-against-big-social-media-except-meta/

Silicon Valley School District Files Laughable, Vexatious RICO Claims Against Big Social Media… But Not Facebook Or Instagram

Back in January, we wrote about the Seattle public school district filing an absolutely laughable lawsuit against basically all of big social media, based on a bunch of misread and misunderstood st…

Techdirt

@mmasnick Wow, that's... not great.

My kids are all products of San Mateo county public schools, though its important to note that the SMC Board of Education is *NOT* a school district and is more of a support organization than an oversight organ.

I know one person on the SMCBoE (and of course she would never comment on ongoing litigation), but I would *love* to know how genuine support is for this lawsuit. I am kinda shocked how aggressively misguided it appears to be.

RICO of course, can be shown without any showing of actual underlying crime or actual commission of malfeasance, IIRC, correct?

@gwachob i can find no record of the board voting on this. I asked the superintendent and the PR firm they hired, and they refuse to answer when and how this lawsuit was approved.