TikTok and ByteDance Sued by Florida AG Uthmeier Under FDUTPA and Section 1736

15th Jun 2026
TikTok, its Beijing-headquartered parent ByteDance Ltd., and the newly formed TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC face a civil lawsuit filed by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier in the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit Court in and for St. Lucie County, Florida, seeking injunctive relief, civil penalties of up to $50,000 per violation, punitive damages, and disgorgement — on the same day the United Kingdom announced a ban on social media access for all children under 16. The complaint, filed June 15, 2026 as Filing No. 250335068 and publicly available at myfloridalegal.com, names six defendants: TikTok Inc., TikTok Ltd., TikTok Pte. Ltd., TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, ByteDance Ltd. and ByteDance Inc. It alleges three causes of action, violation of Florida's H.B. 3, the Online Protections for Minors Act codified at § 501.1736, Fla. Stat.; violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act (FDUTPA); and public nuisance under §§ 60.05 and 823.01. The complaint alleges TikTok knowingly contracted with children under 14 in breach of Section 1736, failed to obtain parental consent for 14 and 15 year old users, and systematically misrepresented its content to parents through deliberately understated age ratings in the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, and Microsoft Store. TikTok Inc. is valued at a minimum of $50 billion; ByteDance Ltd. at more than $400 billion. The complaint draws on the AG's own investigation, which used a test TikTok account registered as a 13-year-old in Florida to document sexual content, profanity and mature themes served algorithmically without any search. It also relies on internal TikTok documents alleging that the company knew over 10 percent of daily active users under 16 spent on average two hours or more per day on the platform, the statutory threshold that brings TikTok within Section 1736's scope and that in 2022, 25 percent of users aged 16 to 18 were active on the platform between midnight and 5:00am. The AG further alleges that TikTok's CEO Shou Zi Chew, who also serves on the board of TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, misrepresented the platform's approach to child safety in written testimony to the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce in March 2023. TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, established in January 2026 following a government-ordered divestment of ByteDance's US operations with ByteDance retaining 19.9 percent, is named as a defendant on a continuity-of-enterprise theory. Outside counsel Cooper & Kirk PLLC is instructed on the defence. The UK dimension is the transatlantic dimension that gives this filing its broadest significance for legal practitioners. The announcement of a UK ban on social media for children under 16 on the same day as the Florida filing places the Online Safety Act framework and US state-level child protection enforcement on a directly converging trajectory. The Florida action also signals that the divestment structure that produced TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC provides no insulation from state consumer protection enforcement — a point that in-house counsel at technology platforms restructuring US operations under federal pressure will need to address explicitly in their compliance frameworks. Solicitors advising platforms on Online Safety Act age assurance and content moderation obligations should now be stress-testing those frameworks against the Florida enforcement model, which treats inadequate parental controls, misleading app store ratings, and addictive design features as independently actionable unfair trade practices carrying per-violation civil penalties.