A federal judge rejected a request by Big Tech companies to dismiss a nationwide lawsuit accusing the platforms of illegally enticing and addicting teenagers at the cost of their mental health.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers denied the request from Google, Meta, ByteDance, and Snap in a Tuesday order in the Northern District of California. The four companies had requested that Rogers collectively reject lawsuits filed by school districts and state attorneys general in the last few months. The judge decided that the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a law that protects platforms from being held accountable for content posted by third parties, do not shield the companies from all liabilities. The claims presented in the related suits are unrelated to "free speech and expression," she said, and have to do more with product defects, such as insufficient parental controls or a lack of age verification systems.

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"Addressing these defects would not require that defendants change how or what speech they disseminate," Rogers wrote. "For example, parental notifications could plausibly empower parents to limit their children's access to the platform or discuss platform use with them."

Rogers did throw out some of the allegations presented by the plaintiffs, such as offering a beginning or ending to a feed or recommending a youth's account to adults.

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"Today's decision is a significant victory for the families that have been harmed by the dangers of social media," Lexi Hazam, Previn Warren, and Chris Seeger, the lead lawyers representing the plaintiffs, said in a joint statement. "The Court's ruling repudiates Big Tech's overbroad and incorrect claim that Section 230 or the First Amendment should grant them blanket immunity for the harm they cause to their users."

More than 140 school districts have filed similar lawsuits against the tech platforms over the last few months. Forty-two states and Washington, D.C., also filed a suit last month alleging that Big Tech platforms were harmful and addictive for teenagers.