Estimated reading time: 8 minutes.
Key facts
- Case: State of West Virginia ex rel. John B. McCuskey v. Snap Inc., No. CC-20-2026-C-1339, Circuit Court of Kanawha County, West Virginia, filed November 5, 2026. Judge David J. Hardy is assigned.
- Plaintiff: West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey, on behalf of the state.
- Defendant: Snap Inc., the Delaware company that makes Snapchat.
- What is alleged: Snap misled West Virginia parents and children about Snapchat's safety while knowing it exposed young users to sexual exploitation, harmful content and compulsive use, and misled families about its My AI chatbot.
- Law used: The West Virginia Consumer Credit and Protection Act.
- Status: A state enforcement case, not a class action. No court has ruled on the claims, and there is nothing for families to file.
In this article
- Why the state filed now
- What the complaint says about safety promises
- Reports that went unreviewed
- Design features and parental controls
- The My AI chatbot allegations
- What West Virginia is asking the court to do
- What remains unproven
- What parents can do now
- Frequently asked questions
West Virginia has sued Snap Inc., claiming the company told families Snapchat was safe for teens while its own records showed predators were reaching children on the app and abuse reports often went unreviewed. Attorney General JB McCuskey filed the consumer protection lawsuit on November 5, 2026, in Kanawha County Circuit Court.
The complaint also targets My AI, Snapchat's built-in chatbot. It claims Snap released the chatbot to children without enough testing and misled families about what happens to their conversations and location. The case comes one week after the same office sued TikTok, which we covered in West Virginia sues TikTok over child safety. Every description of Snap's conduct below is an allegation from the state's complaint or the attorney general's office.
Why the state filed now
The lawsuit was filed one day before the first anniversary of the death of Bryce Tate, a 15-year-old honors student at Nitro High School. According to the complaint, on November 6, 2025, Bryce was targeted in a sextortion scheme that began on Snapchat.
The complaint says a predator posing as a 17-year-old girl contacted Bryce after school, sharing enough accurate details to seem real. After Bryce sent images, the predator demanded $500 and threatened to release them. Bryce offered the $30 he had. His father reported that the predator sent about 120 messages in roughly 20 minutes, set a deadline and pressured Bryce to take his own life. He died about three hours after the first contact, the complaint says.
The complaint also describes the 2018 death of 12-year-old Cimarron Thomas of West Virginia, who it says was contacted through Snapchat by a man in the United Kingdom using a girl's profile.
"We needed to act," McCuskey said in a statement announcing the suit.
If a child is in danger If a child is being threatened online, the attorney general's office urges three steps: stop, screenshot and show someone. Anyone in crisis can call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
What the complaint says about safety promises
The state says Snap has long told the public that it prioritizes child safety and acts quickly on reports of sextortion. It points to 2021 testimony to a U.S. Senate subcommittee in which a Snap executive said its "Trust & Safety team works 24/7 to review reports" of child sexual exploitation.
According to the complaint, Snap's internal records told a different story:
- In June 2022, Snap acknowledged internally that grooming was prominent on the platform, that predators felt confident because Snap had not gone looking for them, and that it was not using grooming-specific detection technology.
- By October 2022, Snap's Trust and Safety team described itself as "down to the bone" and lacked full around-the-clock coverage.
- Snap assigns Snapchat a "13+" age rating in app stores, which the state calls inaccurate.
The complaint says many of these internal records are documents unsealed in other litigation against social media companies.
Reports that went unreviewed
The complaint focuses heavily on what happened after users or Snap's own systems flagged harmful content. According to the state:
- In May 2022, Snap acknowledged internally that 96.7% of reported accounts did not lead to review. Users were instead prompted to block the account.
- An April 2021 internal document found that 86.3% of sexual content Snap flagged on its own, about 2.1 million of 2,459,057 detections, expired before anyone reviewed it.
- During the second half of 2020, 100% of trafficking content flagged by Snap's proactive systems expired before review.
The state also says disappearing messages made evidence hard to preserve. It alleges Snap acknowledged that its investigative preservations did not include chats, and that its internal tool for reporting abuse to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children required an image or video, so a report could not be built on text messages alone.
Not a class action West Virginia is suing on behalf of the state. There is no class to join, no settlement and no claim form for families.
Design features and parental controls
The state says Snapchat was built to keep young users coming back. The complaint points to Snapstreaks, Snapscores, push notifications and endless-scroll feeds. It quotes a January 2019 internal comment describing Streaks as "an accidentally addictive, somewhat unhealthy feature that gamifies friendships in a weird way."
The complaint also takes aim at Family Center, Snap's parental tool. It says that during development in November 2021, Snap co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel wrote that "the goal here is to give the parent visibility but not necessarily control," and later directed staff to remove a proposed option for parents to manage privacy controls. The state says Family Center depends on a child's cooperation to set up.
The complaint cites a 2025 Pew Research Center survey finding that 55% of U.S. teens use Snapchat, with 12% saying they use it "almost constantly."
The My AI chatbot allegations
My AI is a chatbot that appears at the top of Snapchat's chat screen. According to the complaint, it relies on models from OpenAI's GPT technology, and Snap released it to all users, including children, on April 19, 2023, after first offering it to paying Snapchat+ subscribers.
The state alleges:
- My AI gave unsafe advice to users who said they were children, citing tests reported by The Washington Post.
- Snap encouraged users to treat My AI like a friend, letting them name it and customize its avatar.
- My AI can receive a user's location even when the user turns on Ghost Mode, the setting that hides location from friends on Snap Map. The complaint quotes a Snapchat support page saying location shared with Snapchat "will be shared with My AI, even in Ghost Mode."
- Children's conversations with My AI are sent to OpenAI, and conversation content is sent to Microsoft Advertising to select ads shown in the chatbot's replies, even though Snap's privacy policy told users it does not share private communications with service providers, according to the attorney general.
What West Virginia is asking the court to do
The complaint brings one count under the West Virginia Consumer Credit and Protection Act for unfair or deceptive acts and practices. In its prayer for relief, the state asks the court to:
- Find that Snap violated the law.
- Impose civil penalties of up to $5,000 per violation if the court finds repeated and willful violations.
- Order restitution of money taken from West Virginia residents and disgorgement of profits.
- Bar deceptive statements about platform safety.
- Require effective age verification and safeguards for child users, including parental controls, usage limits, crisis response and predator detection.
- Require clear disclosure of known risks and independent monitoring.
Alongside the lawsuit, the attorney general announced funding for the Shield Initiative, a statewide sextortion education campaign from the Bryce Tate Memorial Foundation, paid for with consumer education money from earlier tech cases.
What remains unproven
The internal figures, quotes and descriptions of the deaths come from the state's complaint and the attorney general's announcement. Snap has not had a chance to answer in court. Class Action Pulse did not find a public response from Snap in the coverage reviewed as of November 6, 2026.
Key questions include whether Snap's public statements were deceptive under West Virginia law, and what evidence Snap offers about its safety tools and practices.
Allegations, not findings The claims that Snap misled families about safety and My AI are allegations. A court has not ruled on any of them.
What parents can do now
Parents do not need to file anything because of this lawsuit. Those who want to review a child's Snapchat settings can check Family Center, location sharing and Ghost Mode, and talk with their child about what to do if someone online makes threats. Suspected child sexual exploitation can be reported to local police and the CyberTipline run by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
For cases open to consumers now, see our list of class action cases you can join. This article is for information only and is not legal advice.
Frequently asked questions
What is the West Virginia Snapchat lawsuit about?
The state claims Snap misled parents and children about Snapchat's safety while knowing young users faced sexual exploitation, harmful content and compulsive design, and misled families about the My AI chatbot. The case is No. CC-20-2026-C-1339 in Kanawha County.
Is this a class action?
No. The attorney general is suing on behalf of the state under West Virginia's consumer protection law. There is nothing for families to join.
What does the state want Snap to do?
It wants civil penalties of up to $5,000 per violation, restitution, disgorgement, and court orders requiring age verification, stronger child safeguards, risk disclosures and independent monitoring.
What does the lawsuit say about My AI?
It says Snap released My AI to children on April 19, 2023, without enough testing, that the chatbot can access location even in Ghost Mode, and that conversations go to OpenAI and Microsoft Advertising.
Who was Bryce Tate?
He was a 15-year-old Nitro High School student who died on November 6, 2025, after a sextortion scheme that began on Snapchat, according to the complaint.
Has Snap responded?
Class Action Pulse did not find a public response from Snap in the coverage reviewed as of November 6, 2026. The company has not yet answered in court.
