Silver Golub & Teitell won a $30 million settlement in a case against Google and its YouTube subsidiary for illegally collecting the personal information of children and using the information to show them targeted advertisements.
SGT brought the pioneering lawsuit in 2019. In December 2022, SGT obtained a landmark decision from the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals holding that state law remedies were not pre-empted by the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, reversing a decision by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, which had twice ruled that the claims were pre-empted by COPPA.
In January 2025, Judge Susan van Keulen announced her intention to uphold privacy claims and some state consumer protection law claims, writing that “the court may reasonably infer at the pleading stage that Google knew it was collecting children's data through YouTube in violation of the COPPA.”
The settlement provides compensation for the class, estimated to number between 35 million and 45 million children. Judge van Keulen granted preliminary approval for the settlement in September 2025 and final approval on January 13, 2026.
The case was Hubbard et al. v. Google et al., No. 5:19-cv-07016 (N.D. Cal.).
