Roblox Arbitration Lawsuit: Abuse Survivors Tell MDL Judge the EFAA Bars Roblox and Discord's Clauses

The plaintiffs in the federal Roblox arbitration lawsuit fight answered the platforms on Tuesday, October 27, 2026: children who say adults found and exploited them through Roblox and Discord told Chief Judge Richard Seeborg of the Northern District of California that the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act strips the companies' terms-of-use clauses of any force in their cases. Whether roughly 180 federal suits stay in court now turns on a narrow statutory question the companies have put at the center of the case, namely whether a child who was groomed, coerced into sending images, or otherwise abused online, but never physically touched, has a "sexual assault dispute" within the meaning of the 2022 law.

The opposition responds to motions Roblox Corporation and Discord Inc. filed on September 22, 2026, each asking the court to send six bellwether cases to individual arbitration. Replies are reported due on November 20, 2026, and the motions are set for hearing on January 13, 2027. The ruling will be the first threshold decision in In re: Roblox Corporation Child Sexual Exploitation and Assault Litigation, MDL No. 3166, and it will tell every other platform defendant how far the EFAA reaches when the abuser is a stranger, the defendant is a website, and the harm happened on a screen.

What the plaintiffs told Judge Seeborg on October 27

The core of the October 27 filings, as reported by MLex, is that the EFAA gives survivors of sexual assault and sexual harassment the right to have their cases decided by a court regardless of what arbitration clause they may have clicked through. The statute does that by letting the person alleging the conduct elect to make any predispute arbitration agreement unenforceable "with respect to a case which is filed under Federal, Tribal, or State law and relates to the sexual assault dispute or the sexual harassment dispute." 9 U.S.C. § 402(a).

That framing matters because it shifts the question away from the usual contract fight over notice and assent, where the platforms are strongest, and onto statutory coverage, where state courts have so far sided with plaintiffs. It also puts the question in front of the judge rather than an arbitrator. Section 402(b) provides that whether the chapter applies "shall be determined under Federal law" by a court, "irrespective of whether the party resisting arbitration challenges the arbitration agreement specifically or in conjunction with other terms of the contract containing such agreement," and irrespective of any Delegation Clause sending Arbitrability to the arbitrator.

The plaintiffs' side has a ready-made record for that argument. Two judges of the San Mateo County Superior Court have already held that the EFAA covers child exploitation claims against Roblox and Discord, rejecting the companies' contention that the statute is confined to workplace disputes or to assaults on business premises. Roblox has appealed both rulings to the California Court of Appeal, First Appellate District, where Senators Dick Durbin, Richard Blumenthal and Kirsten Gillibrand filed an amicus brief on August 28, 2026 urging the court to reject arbitration.

What did the plaintiffs argue against Roblox's motion to compel arbitration?

The plaintiffs argued that the EFAA bars Roblox and Discord from enforcing their terms-of-use arbitration clauses because each bellwether case relates to a sexual assault dispute or a sexual harassment dispute, and the statute lets them elect to keep such cases in court. Public reporting on the filings is limited to that core position; the briefs themselves sit on the MDL docket, and their full content has not been reported. The structure of the statute, however, tells practitioners where the argument has to go:

• Coverage. Each bellwether plaintiff must show a sexual assault dispute or a sexual harassment dispute under the statutory definitions.
• Relation. The case must "relate to" that dispute, which plaintiffs will say is satisfied when the claims against the platform arise from the same abuse even though the platform did not commit it.
• Timing. The dispute or claim must have arisen or accrued on or after March 3, 2022, the date the EFAA was signed.
• Predispute agreement. The clause being enforced must be a "predispute arbitration agreement," defined in § 401(1) as an agreement to arbitrate a dispute that had not yet arisen when the agreement was made.

The companies' September motions attack the first, second and fourth elements. The timing element, which the companies have flagged from the outset of the MDL, sorts the inventory by the date of the abuse and was analyzed in this publication's September preview of the motions.

What Roblox and Discord asked for in September

On September 22, 2026, Roblox and Discord each asked Chief Judge Seeborg to compel arbitration in six bellwether cases. Four cases are named in both motions. According to Law.com's account of the filings, the companies took three positions.

First, assent. Both companies say the plaintiffs, or their parents, agreed to arbitrate when they signed up for the services, when they acknowledged updated terms of use, or when they redeemed gift cards. The gift-card theory matters because redemption is a recurring act: a child who redeemed a card months or years after first signing up created, on the companies' account, a fresh manifestation of assent to whatever terms were then in force.

Second, coverage. Both companies argue the EFAA does not apply because the cases do not involve physical contact between the perpetrator, who is a third-party user, and the child. Roblox's motion asserts that three of the six plaintiffs in its set allege exchanges of explicit images rather than physical contact, and it argues that physical contact is required for a sexual assault dispute.

Third, relation. The companies say neither they nor their employees are accused of abuse. In their account, the claims are about failures to screen users, monitor communications and warn families, which are product and negligence theories that do not "relate to" a sexual assault dispute in the sense Congress meant. They also characterize the statute as aimed at workplace disputes, not claims against online services over what users do to one another.

Does the EFAA apply if there was no physical contact?

Probably not under the federal definitions alone, but quite possibly under the state-law and harassment branches of the statute, which is why the contact argument is narrower than it first appears. The EFAA defines a "sexual assault dispute" as "a dispute involving a nonconsensual sexual act or sexual contact, as such terms are defined in section 2246 of title 18 or similar applicable Tribal or State law, including when the victim lacks capacity to consent." 9 U.S.C. § 401(3).

The federal definitions the companies rely on are touch-based. Section 2246(2) defines a "sexual act" through a list of physical acts, including, for a child under 16, intentional touching of the genitalia not through clothing. Section 2246(3) defines "sexual contact" as intentional touching, directly or through clothing, of specified intimate areas with a sexual or abusive intent. Read in isolation, those definitions do not reach a case in which an adult on the other side of the country coerced a child into producing images and never touched her.

The definition does not stop at § 2246, though. Three features of the text cut against the companies:

Statutory feature	Text	Why it matters for no-contact cases
State-law alternative	"or similar applicable Tribal or State law"	Plaintiffs can point to state statutes that define sexual offenses against minors more broadly than the federal touch-based definitions. Whether such a law is "similar" is the litigable question.
Capacity clause	"including when the victim lacks capacity to consent"	Every bellwether plaintiff was a minor. The clause removes any argument that a child's apparent participation made the conduct consensual.
Harassment branch	§ 401(4): "a dispute relating to conduct that is alleged to constitute sexual harassment under applicable Federal, Tribal, or State law"	No contact element at all. Online sexual solicitation and coercion of a child can be pleaded as harassment under state law.
"Relates to"	§ 402(a): "a case which ... relates to the sexual assault dispute or the sexual harassment dispute"	The defendant need not be the perpetrator; the case need only bear a relation to the dispute.
Court decides	§ 402(b): applicability "shall be determined under Federal law" by a court	The contact question is for Judge Seeborg, not an arbitrator.

The likely result is a split inventory rather than a clean win for either side. Bellwether cases alleging an in-person meeting and physical assault fit within § 2246 without difficulty; cases alleging only online exploitation will rise or fall on the state-law clause and the harassment branch.

The sexual harassment dispute route

The harassment branch is the plaintiffs' strongest answer to the contact argument, and it is the part of the statute least discussed in coverage of the MDL. A "sexual harassment dispute" requires only conduct "alleged to constitute sexual harassment under applicable Federal, Tribal, or State law." The phrase "alleged to constitute" means the plaintiff need not prove harassment to invoke the statute; the allegation has to state conduct that applicable law treats as sexual harassment.

The companies' answer will be that "sexual harassment" is a term of art in employment and civil-rights law, which is consistent with their position that Congress was legislating about the workplace. The text does not say "workplace," however. It refers to any applicable federal, tribal or state law, and the San Mateo court has already rejected the workplace limitation on the assault side of the statute. A court that reads "sexual harassment" by reference to state statutes covering sexual harassment outside employment, and to the conduct that criminal and civil child-protection laws describe, could find a covered dispute in a case with no physical contact at all.

For the bellwether cases this has a practical consequence. Even if Judge Seeborg accepts the companies' reading of § 2246, a plaintiff who pleaded repeated sexualized messages, demands for images and threats from an adult user has a second statutory path to stay in court. The companies need to defeat both branches in each no-contact case to compel arbitration.

What happens if a child accepted Roblox's updated terms after the abuse?

If the only arbitration agreement in the record was formed after the abuse occurred, the EFAA may not reach it, because the statute protects claimants only from a "predispute arbitration agreement." That is the significance of the companies' reliance on updated terms and gift-card redemptions: an agreement accepted after the dispute arose is, on the text, not a predispute agreement, and the EFAA does not say it is unenforceable.

The argument has limits. Section 401(1) asks whether the dispute "had not yet arisen at the time of the making of the agreement." A child's first account creation almost always predates the abuse, so the platform's original agreement is predispute, and the EFAA reaches it. The company then needs a court to hold that a later acceptance replaced the earlier agreement and governs the dispute, which is a contract question about novation and the scope of the later terms, decided under state law. Plaintiffs can be expected to respond that a click-through update presented to a minor on a gaming platform is not a knowing agreement to arbitrate an existing abuse claim, and that any later acceptance was itself the product of the same adhesive relationship.

The issue also interacts with minors' contract rights. A minor may generally disaffirm a contract, but defendants in platform cases routinely argue that continued use of the service after the claimed disaffirmance, including after suit is filed, ratifies the terms. Post-abuse and even post-suit account activity is common in these cases, because many children kept their accounts, so the companies' account records will be central to both the predispute question and any disaffirmance fight.

Does the Ending Forced Arbitration Act apply to claims against Roblox and Discord?

On the current record, the answer from every court to decide the question is yes: two San Mateo County Superior Court judges have held that the EFAA covers child exploitation claims against Roblox and Discord even though a third-party user, not the platform, committed the abuse. Chief Judge Seeborg is not bound by those rulings, and the First Appellate District could reverse them, but the federal and state appellate decisions on the statute's reach point the same way.

Three lines of authority favor a broad reading:

• The whole case. The Sixth Circuit in Bruce v. Adams and Reese, LLP, decided February 25, 2026, and the Second Circuit in Diaz-Roa v. Hermes Law, P.C., decided September 30, 2026, held that "case" in § 402(a) means the entire proceeding, so a covered dispute takes every claim in the lawsuit out of arbitration, not just the assault count. In the Roblox MDL, that means product-defect, negligence and consumer-protection counts travel with the covered dispute.
• Non-perpetrator defendants. In C.N. v. Sigma Delta Tau Society, decided September 23, 2026, New York's Appellate Division, Second Department held that the EFAA can block arbitration of a negligence claim against an organization that did not commit the assault, applying a logical-connection test. The San Mateo court reached a similar conclusion about platforms.
• No workplace limit. The San Mateo court rejected the companies' argument that the statute is limited to employment disputes or assaults on business premises, relying on the statute's reference to "any case" that "relates to" the dispute.

The companies' best counterweight is the definition itself. A broad "relates to" test does not help a plaintiff who cannot first show a sexual assault dispute or sexual harassment dispute. That is why the September motions concentrated on contact rather than on relation, and why the no-contact bellwethers are where the motions are most likely to succeed.

Every arbitration ruling involving Roblox so far

Case	Court	Date	Result	Ground
State court case on behalf of a 13-year-old boy	San Mateo County Superior Court (Judge Nina Shapirshteyn)	Late October or early November 2025	Arbitration denied	EFAA applies; on appeal
Grooming, abduction and assault of a 10-year-old girl	San Mateo County Superior Court	February 2026	Roblox and Discord motions denied	EFAA not limited to workplace or business premises; on appeal
Garcia v. Roblox Corp., No. 2:25-cv-03476	C.D. Cal.	February 11, 2026	Arbitration compelled	Children's privacy claims; conspicuous notice and parental assent; EFAA not at issue
Uhl v. Roblox Corp., No. 25-5057	Ninth Circuit	September 3, 2026	Denial of arbitration affirmed	Waiver of Arbitration by litigating first; Judge Bumatay dissented
Video game addiction case	E.D. Pa. (Judge Mia Roberts Perez)	Reported September 28, 2026	Arbitration denied	Minor rejected delegation clause; formation for the court
MDL No. 3166 bellwethers	N.D. Cal. (Chief Judge Seeborg)	Hearing January 13, 2027	Pending	EFAA coverage, contact, predispute assent

The pattern is that Roblox wins arbitration when the EFAA is not in play and the dispute is about data or money, and loses when the case involves sexual abuse and the statute is invoked. The MDL motions are the companies' attempt to move the abuse cases from the second category to the first through the definitions.

Can a minor be bound by Roblox's arbitration clause?

A minor can be bound by Roblox's arbitration clause in some cases, but in sexual abuse cases covered by the EFAA the clause is unenforceable at the child's election regardless of whether the child validly agreed to it. Outside the EFAA, the answer depends on state contract law: courts have enforced Roblox's terms where the notice was conspicuous and a parent assented, as the Central District of California did in Garcia, and have refused to enforce them where assent or delegation failed, as the Eastern District of Pennsylvania did in the video game addiction case.

The EFAA makes much of that law beside the point. The statute does not ask whether the agreement was validly formed; it lets the claimant elect to render a valid agreement unenforceable. That is one reason the plaintiffs lead with the statute and treat contract formation as a fallback. It is also why the companies emphasize the statutory definitions instead of the strength of their sign-up flows.

When will the judge rule on Roblox's arbitration motion?

The hearing on the motions to compel is set for January 13, 2027, so a ruling is unlikely before mid-January and could follow weeks or months after argument. The briefing calendar is short:

Date	Event
December 12, 2025	Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) centralizes the cases in the Northern District of California before Chief Judge Seeborg as MDL No. 3166
August 28, 2026	Senators Durbin, Blumenthal and Gillibrand file amicus brief in the First Appellate District supporting application of the EFAA
September 3, 2026	Ninth Circuit affirms denial of arbitration in Uhl v. Roblox on waiver
September 22, 2026	Roblox and Discord file motions to compel arbitration of six bellwether cases each
October 27, 2026	Plaintiffs file oppositions invoking the EFAA
November 20, 2026	Reported deadline for the companies' replies
January 13, 2027	Hearing before Chief Judge Seeborg

Whatever the ruling, it is unlikely to be the last word. An order denying a Motion to Compel Arbitration is immediately appealable under 9 U.S.C. § 16(a), and under Coinbase, Inc. v. Bielski (2023) the district court must stay proceedings in the affected cases while that appeal is pending. A denial would therefore send the bellwether cases to the Ninth Circuit and pause them; a grant compelling arbitration is generally not immediately appealable, and the cases would be stayed in favor of individual arbitrations. The First Appellate District's ruling on the San Mateo appeals may also arrive in the same window and will be cited by whichever side it favors.

How many lawsuits are in the Roblox MDL?

About 180 federal lawsuits were pending in MDL No. 3166 as of October 2026, with one tracker counting 182. The JPML created the MDL in December 2025 to coordinate suits alleging that Roblox and Discord designed and operated their services in ways that allowed adults to find, groom and exploit children, and the docket grew from fewer than a hundred actions at centralization. Additional cases are pending in state courts, including the San Mateo cases now on appeal.

The MDL is not a Class Action. Each family files its own complaint, and there is no claim form or settlement fund for individual plaintiffs. That is why the arbitration motions matter: an order compelling arbitration would convert a coordinated Mass Tort docket into a set of individual arbitrations, one per child.

The companies are also facing state enforcement. Roblox agreed in April 2026 to pay $35.8 million to Nevada ($12.5 million), Alabama ($12.2 million) and West Virginia ($11.1 million) over child-safety claims, with commitments that included age verification and limits on adult-to-child chat, and on September 29, 2026 it agreed to pay Kansas $9.8 million over three years plus $500,000 for a public awareness campaign. Roblox's quarterly filing for the period ended March 31, 2026 listed pending suits by Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, Texas and Tennessee. None of those payments goes to MDL plaintiffs, and no state settlement contains an arbitration term binding families.

The mass arbitration arithmetic

If Judge Seeborg compels arbitration in any bellwether case, the consequence reaches beyond those six or so plaintiffs. Roblox's and Discord's terms route disputes to individual arbitration, and the providers' consumer rules put most of the cost on the business. If the roughly 180 federal plaintiffs, plus state-court plaintiffs, were required to file individual demands, the companies would face filing and administrative fees per claim under the provider rules, and coordinated counsel would be positioned to invoke the providers' Mass Arbitration procedures. In a conventional consumer dispute that fee exposure is the claimant's leverage; in an abuse case, plaintiffs' firms and parents' groups have framed the larger cost of arbitration as secrecy, because the proceedings and any award would not be public.

The incentives are not symmetrical. Plaintiffs want a public forum, discovery under federal rules and juries in bellwether trials. The companies want individualized, confidential proceedings without the precedential effect of an MDL verdict. Fees are a secondary consideration for both sides, but they will shape settlement value if any substantial share of the docket is sent to arbitration.

What it means for defendants, claimants' counsel, platform drafters and funders

• Platform defendants. The no-contact argument is the only route that removes the EFAA from a case entirely, and it works only if the court reads § 2246 as the exclusive definition and rejects the harassment branch. Defendants in other online-exploitation dockets should expect the January ruling to be cited against them if it adopts a broad "similar State law" reading, and should build records on accrual dates and on which version of the terms governed at the time of the abuse.
• Claimants' counsel. Pleading matters. Complaints that identify the state-law offense the conduct constitutes, that plead harassment as an independent basis, and that fix the accrual date after March 3, 2022 give the court a covered dispute without relying on physical contact. Counsel should also inventory post-abuse account activity, because updated-terms acceptance and gift-card redemptions are the companies' route around the predispute limit.
• Drafters of consumer terms. Platforms with child users cannot draft around the EFAA, but they can control how updates are presented and whether a later version purports to govern earlier disputes. A retroactivity provision that is adequately disclosed is what the predispute argument depends on; without one, the original sign-up agreement probably governs. Mass Arbitration Protocol, Batching and fee provisions should be reviewed against the possibility of hundreds of coordinated demands if any abuse claims are compelled.
• Funders and referral networks. Third-Party Litigation Funding and case-acquisition budgets built on the assumption that these claims stay in court should account for a split outcome in which contact cases remain in the MDL and image-only cases are compelled. Contingency Fee economics differ sharply between a public bellwether docket and confidential individual arbitrations.

FAQ

Can Roblox force child abuse lawsuits into arbitration?

Not in cases covered by the EFAA, because the statute lets survivors elect to make Roblox's predispute arbitration clause unenforceable. Roblox can compel arbitration only if a court finds the case falls outside the statute, for example because no sexual assault dispute or sexual harassment dispute is alleged, the claim accrued before March 3, 2022, or a post-dispute agreement governs.

Does the EFAA apply if there was no physical contact?

It may. The federal definitions incorporated by 9 U.S.C. § 401(3) require touching, but the statute also accepts "similar applicable Tribal or State law" and separately covers sexual harassment disputes, which have no contact element. Chief Judge Seeborg will decide how those provisions apply to the no-contact bellwether cases.

Does the Ending Forced Arbitration Act apply to claims against Roblox and Discord?

Two San Mateo County Superior Court judges have held that it does, even though third-party users committed the abuse, and both rulings are on appeal. The federal MDL court has not yet ruled.

Can a minor be bound by Roblox's arbitration clause?

Sometimes, under state contract law, especially where a parent assented and the terms were conspicuous. In a case covered by the EFAA, the clause is unenforceable at the child's election whether or not it was validly formed.

When will the judge rule on Roblox's arbitration motion?

The motions are set for hearing on January 13, 2027, after the companies' reported November 20, 2026 reply deadline, so a ruling is not expected before mid-January 2027.

How many lawsuits are in the Roblox MDL?

About 180 federal cases were pending in MDL No. 3166 as of October 2026, with one tracker reporting 182, all before Chief Judge Richard Seeborg in the Northern District of California.