A federal judge has dismissed a proposed class action lawsuit accusing Apple of doing too little to stop child sexual abuse material from spreading through its iCloud data storage service, ruling that a federal law broadly protects the company from such claims.
U.S. District Judge Noël Wise, based in San Jose, California, sided with Apple in a ruling issued late Monday. The judge agreed that Apple is shielded from liability under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a federal law passed in 1996 that protects online platforms from being held responsible for content posted by their users.
The plaintiffs, who used the pseudonyms Amy and Jessica, filed the lawsuit in 2024 on behalf of a proposed class of 2,680 individuals with similar allegations. They claimed that images documenting their sexual abuse as children continued to be stored and shared on Apple’s iCloud platform years later. The lawsuit sought compensatory damages estimated at up to $32.8 billion, as well as a court order requiring Apple to make changes to iCloud.
Judge Wise determined that the lawsuit was essentially asking Apple to be held accountable for not removing or blocking content that its users had created — a type of claim that falls squarely within Section 230’s protections. She also noted that no federal law currently requires Apple to proactively use existing or new technology to detect and report child sexual abuse material on its cloud platform.
“Lawmakers can fix this problem that is contributing to the exploitation of children,” Wise wrote. “This Court cannot.”
The case was dismissed with prejudice, which means it cannot be brought again in its current form.
James Marsh, an attorney representing Amy and Jessica, said the plaintiffs are weighing an appeal and looking into whether other legal avenues may be available. Though they disagree with the judge’s interpretation of the law, Marsh said they share her broader concern about the issue.
“We agree with her conclusion that Congress should do more to protect children online and address the skyrocketing harms from online exploitation,” Marsh said.
Apple did not immediately provide a comment in response to a request from reporters.
The lawsuit alleged that Apple was aware of the child sexual abuse material problem on iCloud but chose not to deploy widely available technology to identify and report it. According to court filings, Apple announced in 2021 that it planned to roll out a program called NeuralHash to detect such material — but by 2022, the company reversed course and said it would not move forward with the tool. Around that same time, Apple introduced end-to-end encryption for iCloud data, which the lawsuit said made it nearly impossible for law enforcement or Apple itself to detect child sexual abuse material stored there.
Apple has maintained that it has worked diligently to combat the spread of child sexual abuse material on its devices, and said in court filings that it chose alternative methods to NeuralHash in order to better protect user security and privacy.
Judge Wise had previously dismissed an earlier version of the complaint but allowed the plaintiffs an opportunity to revise and refile it. This latest dismissal with prejudice ends that process.
Apple is also facing a separate but similar lawsuit brought by West Virginia’s attorney general. That case has been described as the first of its kind filed by a government agency targeting the distribution of child sexual abuse material on Apple’s data storage platform.
