Two things happened at roughly the same time and together made this category of litigation possible. Congress removed forced arbitration for sexual assault claims in 2021, and plaintiffs’ lawyers learned to frame platform cases around product design rather than user content. Everything on this page follows from those two developments.
The four active fronts
MDL + state AG actions
Roblox
170+ MDL cases as of August 2026. Nevada announced a $12.5 million settlement in April 2026 with safety reforms attached; West Virginia reached $11 million. Roblox denies the allegations.
State enforcement wave
Discord
Texas sued in May 2026; Indiana sued Discord and Roblox that month under its deceptive sales statute; Arkansas sued both in June 2026. Discord denies the allegations.
Individual and consolidated claims
Lyft
The same negligent-screening and failure-to-respond theories as the Uber litigation, in a different procedural posture and without a comparably sized federal MDL.
If you are considering a claim
What filing involves
Deadlines in these cases are short compared with childhood abuse claims. If you are weighing whether to act, read this before deciding to wait.
Why the platform, and not just the person
The individual who committed the assault is almost never a viable defendant. They may be unidentifiable, in prison, or without assets. The platform is different: it chose who to let onto the system, how to check them, how to match them with customers, what to do about complaints, and what to tell the public about safety.
The recurring allegations across all four cases are the same handful of decisions:
- Screening that did not screen. Name-based background checks instead of fingerprinting; self-declared ages with nothing verifying them.
- Complaints that led nowhere. Reports about a specific driver or user that allegedly did not result in removal, allowing the same person to continue.
- Design that creates the risk. A private car at night with a stranger; a private message channel between an adult and a child. Both are configurations the company controls entirely.
- Safety marketing. Public assurances that plaintiffs allege did not match internal knowledge.
- Structure used as a shield. Independent contractor classification, or the argument that the company is only a conduit for what users do.
Two shifts that changed everything
The end of forced arbitration for these claims
For two decades, the arbitration clause in a platform’s terms of service was the first and often the last obstacle. Arbitration is private, individual, and generally far less favorable to claimants than a jury. The Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021 gives a claimant asserting sexual assault or harassment the right to reject a pre-dispute arbitration agreement and proceed in court. That single change is why thousands of these cases exist in courtrooms at all.
The common carrier question
A common carrier, meaning a business that transports the public for hire, owes passengers the highest duty of care, and that duty is non-delegable. It cannot be handed off to a contractor. Uber is currently appealing a ruling that it qualifies. If that holding survives, the contractor-classification shield that underpins the entire gig economy stops working for passenger safety. If it does not, the plaintiffs fall back on ordinary negligence, which is a heavier lift. See our detailed explanation on the Uber page.
Childhood abuse claims often benefit from delayed-discovery rules and revival windows measured in decades. Adult sexual assault claims usually do not. In most states they run on a personal injury or sexual assault limitations period measured in a small number of years from the assault itself. If a rideshare or platform assault happened to you as an adult, waiting is genuinely costly. Check your state on our deadline reference.
Questions we are asked most
Because the claim is about the company's own conduct, not the perpetrator's. The theory is that the company designed a system that predictably placed a vulnerable person alone with a stranger it recruited, marketed that system as safe, and then made decisions about screening, monitoring and response that were unreasonable given what it knew. That is ordinary negligence law applied to a new business model.
It is a serious defense but not an automatic one. Section 230 protects a platform from being treated as the publisher of user content. Plaintiffs therefore build claims around the platform's own design choices, such as age verification, default privacy settings, matching and recommendation systems, moderation staffing, and safety representations to parents, rather than around anything a user said. Courts have divided on exactly where that line falls, and it is currently the central question in this area.
Often not, and the reason is a specific federal statute. The Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021 gives a person asserting a sexual assault or harassment claim the right to reject a pre-dispute arbitration agreement and go to court instead. This was one of the most consequential changes for survivors in decades and it is a large part of why platform litigation became viable at scale.
No. A report helps but is not required, and a great many of these claims involve none. Platform cases are unusually well documented in evidentiary terms because the company recorded almost everything: trip data, GPS traces, account records, in-app messages, and prior complaints about the same person. Much of that sits inside the company's systems and is obtained through discovery.
- In re Uber Technologies, Inc., Passenger Sexual Assault Litigation, MDL No. 3084 (N.D. Cal.).
- Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021, Pub. L. 117-90.
- Roblox multidistrict litigation docket; Arkansas, Indiana, Texas, Nevada and West Virginia attorney general actions and settlements, 2026.
- 47 U.S.C. § 230 and its application to product-design claims.
- The Schroeder Firm, rideshare assault practice.
