Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced Sept. 25, 2026, that TikTok will settle the state’s lawsuit over teen safety, paying “a minimum of $100 million, due to the state within 45 days, with the potential to receive up to $300 million if certain conditions are met,” according to the AG’s release. The settlement takes the form of a final judgment and consent decree — a court order both sides agreed to — filed the same day in Montgomery County Circuit Court and signed by Judge Monet M. Gaines.
Where the $100 million, $116 million and $300 million come from
Fund 1 totals $116,200,000: $100,000,000 designated “compensatory restitution and remediation,” due within 45 days, plus $14,200,000 in attorneys’ fees and $2,000,000 in litigation expenses, due within 30 days. The AG’s release calls the $100 million piece the “minimum” Alabama will receive; it goes to the Office of the Alabama Attorney General, “to be used in the Attorney General’s sole discretion for any lawful purpose, including compensatory restitution and remediation for the benefit of Alabama consumers” — the decree leaves how that money is spent to the attorney general’s discretion.
Fund 2 is a contingent pool of up to $183,800,000 that vests in four tiers — 10, then 20, then 30, then 40 participating states — as more state attorneys general reach “qualifying agreements” with TikTok within specified windows. A tier that misses its window, and all subsequent unvested tiers, “shall permanently lapse, terminate, and be forfeited.” Fund 1 plus Fund 2’s maximum equals exactly $300 million, matching the release’s ceiling. A “most favored nation” clause could add to Fund 1 if states covered by the Meta consent judgment’s Exhibit B (excluding Texas, Florida and New Mexico) together recover more than $5.1 billion from TikTok; Alabama would get 1.55% of the excess.
What changes for teens in Alabama, with deadlines
The decree’s compliance provisions — Section III — apply “to the operation of the TikTok platform in the State of Alabama,” and Judge Gaines signed the decree on Sept. 25, 2026, starting the “Effective Date” that triggers every deadline below. Several changes carry their own deadline. Productive pauses at 60 and 90 cumulative daily minutes are due within four months. Under-13 detection methods are due within six months. A default “Non-Personalized Feed” option is due within nine months. Predicted-age models with falling false-positive limits are due within one year. Everything else — the default two-hour daily limit, “Night Access Mode” blocking teens between midnight and 6 a.m., and quiet hours on push notifications — falls under the decree’s catch-all: implementation “as soon as reasonably practicable, but no later than 180 days after the Effective Date,” about six months out. Teens are barred from applying “Cosmetic Procedure Filters” to their own content — any filter or AR effect that “idealizes a user’s face in a way that cannot be achieved without cosmetic surgery.”
What is contingent
A stricter “Contingent Injunctive Relief” section is not currently in effect. It would tighten Night Access Mode to 10 p.m.-7 a.m., default the daily cap to 120 minutes, and hide counts of “reactions” from teens’ own content and Friends Feed. A sub-clause tied to a related Meta settlement could push that cap to 60 minutes instead. These terms activate only if Meta, Snap, YouTube and any qualifying new competing platform — a “New SMP Entrant” — each adopt “substantively equivalent” measures, an event the decree calls “Industry-Wide Adoption.” August 2036 is not a deadline for that adoption; once triggered, the terms run for up to five years, “but in no event beyond August 26, 2036.” Until then, the stricter rules do not apply.
What TikTok says and does not admit
The decree was “entered by the Court without trial or adjudication of any issue of fact or law, and without a finding or admission of wrongdoing or liability of any kind,” and states Defendants “expressly deny” any violation of law. The AG’s release describes the underlying claims as accusing TikTok of having “designed its platform with addictive features, knowingly exposed young users to serious mental harms, and intentionally misled the public about the safety of its platforms” — but those are the state’s allegations, not something the decree finds TikTok did. A TikTok spokesperson, quoted by CBS News, said, “This builds on our commitment and core objective to continually enhance our robust safety tools to protect teens.”
How the case got here
Alabama sued TikTok in April 2025, with trial set for the following Monday, Sept. 28 — which the AG’s release said “would have” made Alabama “the first state to bring its claims against TikTok to trial.” Instead, the parties filed the consent decree on Friday, Sept. 25, 2026, resolving the suit without trial. The release notes Marshall reached a settlement with Meta the previous month bringing Alabama $117 million, and a Roblox settlement securing $12 million for school resource officers.
What comes next
Minnesota, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Massachusetts are among the states whose attorneys general have pending TikTok lawsuits, according to those states’ offices. How many states sign “qualifying agreements” will determine whether Fund 2’s four tiers vest — separate from whether Meta, Snap, YouTube and any New SMP Entrant reach Industry-Wide Adoption, which alone would activate the decree’s stricter contingent terms.
Sources and further reading
- Attorney General Marshall Announces Historic Multi-Million-Dollar Settlement with TikTok
- State of Alabama v. TikTok Inc. et al., Stipulated Final Judgment and Consent Decree (Montgomery County Circuit Court, No. 03-CV-2025-900628)
- Attorney General Steve Marshall Sues Social Media Giant, TikTok, for Deceptive Claims about Youth Safety