Federal judge dismisses Apple iCloud child-abuse case

A federal judge has dismissed a major class-action lawsuit against Apple that accused the company of failing to prevent the spread of child sexual abuse material through its iCloud storage service. The ruling, issued late on Monday, July 13, by U.S. District Judge Noël Wise in San Jose, California, found that Apple is broadly shielded from liability under a key internet law.

The lawsuit was originally filed in 2024 by two plaintiffs using the pseudonyms Amy and Jessica, who sought to represent a class of 2,680 individuals with similar claims. They alleged that images of their childhood sexual abuse continued to be stored and shared on iCloud and that Apple knowingly declined to deploy available detection tools to identify and report such material. The suit sought up to $32.8 billion in compensatory damages and a court order requiring changes to iCloud.

In her decision, Judge Wise determined that the plaintiffs' claims treated Apple as a publisher responsible for user-generated content, which places the case under the protections of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This 1996 federal law generally shields online platforms from liability for content created by their...