MDL Sought for Disney Child Data Collection Lawsuits

Lawsuits accuse Disney of illegally invading the privacy of potentially millions of children, by not properly labeling videos posted to YouTube.

A panel of federal judges received a petition this week, asking for several class action lawsuits against Disney to be consolidated before one judge for coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings.

At the heart of each complaint are allegation that Disney violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a federal law passed in 1998 that requires companies to obtain parental consent before collecting data from children under 13. The law was designed to prevent companies from secretly tracking children online or using their personal information for targeted advertising.

According to the lawsuits, Disney violated these protections by posting tens of thousands of child-focused videos featuring characters like Mickey Mouse, Frozen, Toy Story and The Incredibles on YouTube without marking them as “made for children.” By failing to label the content, Disney was able to bypass YouTube’s COPPA safeguards introduced in 2019 and allegedly collect data on minors without parental consent.

While YouTube flagged the issue in mid-2020 and reclassified the content, the complaints say Disney continued using channel-level settings that allowed the violations to persist, enabling the ongoing collection of children’s data without parental consent.

In September 2024, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) even warned that data privacy on social media platforms was “woefully inadequate,” often tracking the activity of children and teens online, and then monetizing that data, without their parents’ permission.

As a result, a larger body of social media addiction lawsuits have been filed against platforms like YouTube, Facebook and TikTok, alleging that they use algorithms intended to maximize user engagement, which has led to compulsive use, eating disorders, depression, anxiety, suicide and sexual abuse among a generation of children and teens.

Earlier this month, the FTC announced that Disney agreed to pay a $10 million fine for failing to properly mark the videos in question. However, that did not resolve multiple class action lawsuits currently being pursued.

On September 12, one of the plaintiffs involved in the civil litigation, Ashley Popa, filed a motion for transfer (PDF) with the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, calling for the creation of a Disney children’s privacy lawsuit multidistrict litigation (MDL) in the Southern District of New York.

According to the motion, there are currently five such Disney data privacy class action lawsuits filed in three separate district courts. Centralizing them into one MDL to be overseen by a single federal judge for coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings would prevent duplicate discovery, contradictory rulings and serve the convenience of the court, witnesses and parties. The motion anticipates more lawsuits are likely pending.

“Disney’s conduct illegally invades the privacy of millions of children in the United States, and it violates an array of federal and state statutes protecting children and consumers.”

– Memorandum of law in support of Ashley Popa’s Motion for Transfer

If the panel agrees to create an MDL for the litigation, the cases will be transferred before one U.S. District Judge. However, the cases will remain individual, separate claims, and if there is no resolution or settlement reached during the pretrial proceedings they would be remanded back to their originating districts for individual trial dates.

Social Media Addiction Lawsuits

More than 1,800 social media addiction lawsuits are already consolidated in a separate multidistrict litigation before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in the Northern District of California, accusing major social media platforms of intentionally using algorithms and design features that foster compulsive use among children, placing profits and engagement ahead of user safety.

Judge Rogers selected 11 student cases to serve as early “bellwether” trials in June, which will test how juries react to evidence and testimony expected to be central to the broader litigation. Those lawsuits are now undergoing additional discovery, with the first trial anticipated in late 2026.

While the bellwether outcomes will not directly decide the remaining claims, they are expected to influence settlement talks by signaling how juries may view the allegations and evidence presented across the MDL.

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