Navigating Notice to Minors in Class Action Settlements

Class action settlements involving digital products and services potentially or actually used by minors continue to rise in prevalence. These matters create unique challenges, particularly because minors cannot take legal action.

These cases pose distinct notice and settlement administration challenges, including ensuring notice reaches the adults who must make informed decisions on behalf of children and teens. An additional layer of strategy, precision and sensitivity is required to account for the unique dynamics of youth-focused cases and the role of parents and guardians. 

As courts increasingly examine how notice programs address these circumstances, parties and settlement administrators must ensure their approaches are reasonably calculated to reach those authorized to exercise a minor’s legal rights. This article examines key considerations and recommends best practices for addressing these challenges.

 

Ensuring Notice Reach

Courts expect notice to reach individuals authorized to exercise legal rights, decide whether to file a claim, request exclusion, object and manage any resulting benefits. For minors, these individuals are parents or legal guardians, not the minors who may have used the product or service. Notice programs must therefore identify and reach these legally authorized decision-makers, even when available data primarily relates to minors.

 

Direct Notice

Many class actions involve datasets in which minors are listed as account holders, including child-created email accounts and accounts that may or may not contain any parent or guardian information. As a result, administrators are often consulted to bridge the gap between minor-associated records and the adults making decisions on the minor’s behalf. When parent or guardian contact information is available, that information should be used for notice purposes. When parent or guardian contact information is not readily available, administrators may have ways to convert minor-associated records into reliable notice pathways to reach adults. In service of that, it may be important to:

• Consider who is and who is not a minor. Depending on the class period at issue, all, some or none of the affected individuals may still be minors at the time notice is disseminated. To address this issue, it may be appropriate to consider the age or age range of class members during the class period to determine whether they remain minors and to determine the appropriate recipients of notice.
• Identify adult household contacts. Use identity-resolution tools to match a minor-associated identifier to adult contacts such as a parent or guardian’s email address, phone number or mailing address.
• Address correspondence appropriately. When sending to an address or account linked to a minor, format communications for adults, such as “To the family of …” or “To the parent or guardian of [initials],” to help ensure the notice reaches the individual authorized to act on the minor’s behalf.
• Protect sensitive information. Notice communications may need to be carefully worded to ensure only relevant information is conveyed to the recipient.  

 

Media Considerations

In keeping with typical judicial practice and expectations, reach and frequency should be planned and measured against relevant target audiences. Therefore, in instances involving minors, it is important to consider the class period, as well as the ages of minors during that period and their ages today. For example, if the class period ranged from 2015 to 2026 and the alleged misconduct affected children under age 13, targeting only parents of children under age 13 may not suffice. Instead, a notice program implemented in 2026 would need to be layered to target multiple audiences, including parents of relevant-aged children and young adults. Accordingly, target audience selection should reflect not only who was affected during the class period, but also who is most likely to receive and act on the notice at the time it is disseminated.

 

Recent Judicial Guidance

Courts are increasingly evaluating how notice plans use behavioral advertising to reach parents and guardians in minors’ privacy settlements. For example, in A.B. et al. v. Google LLC, 23-cv-03101 (N.D. Cal.), the court explored the appropriateness of using parent-targeted behavioral advertising as part of the notice program given that the litigation itself concerned online tracking practices, ultimately approving the notice plan the parties developed in consultation with Kroll experts. 

Similarly, in Q.J. v. PowerSchool Holdings LLC, 23-cv-05689 (N.D. Ill.), after expressing similar interest in the issue of notice to minors, the court approved a notice plan that would reach class members who were likely to be 18 or older at the time of notice, given the class member data likely contained outdated school email addresses for these individuals. For any class members who remained minors at the time, the court approved a more nuanced multimodal plan for delivering notice. This underscores the importance of accounting for changes in a class population over time, particularly in cases involving minors. The notice plan, as designed and implemented, addressed these considerations through robust email and postal address updating protocols, as well as a strategic and highly targeted media campaign. 

 

Best Practices and Recommendations

Against this backdrop, several best practices can help parties and settlement administrators develop effective notice programs in matters involving minors.

• Direct notice to parents/guardians, not minors. Design all notice for parents or guardians as the legally relevant recipients, even when only minor-associated data is available.
• Use household- or guardian-oriented addressing. Address communications to the family or to the parent or guardian to attempt to ensure that notice reaches the adults responsible for the minor’s participation.
• Apply privacy-compliant, minimal-use data practices. Use only what is needed to identify and contact adults, and rely on privacy-preserving matching to reach them.
• Align media planning with appropriate audiences. Tie reach and frequency modeling to appropriate adult populations.
• Ensure transparency and clarity in notice content. Explain why the parent or household is being contacted, what information was used and what steps an authorized person can take on a minor’s behalf.
• Account for downstream claim needs. Confirm that the person filing is the appropriate parent or guardian, use enhanced identity-verification when impersonation risk is higher, and clearly describe any custodial or parental disbursement requirements. Payments should be delivered to the parent or guardian as well. 
• Coordinate closely with the settlement administrator. Collaborate early to ensure legally compliant data handling and operations and to keep notice and claims processes fully aligned.  

 

Conclusion

Class actions involving minors present distinct notice challenges because the individuals affected by the alleged conduct are not always the individuals who must receive and act on notice. As recent cases demonstrate, courts are increasingly focused on whether notice programs are thoughtfully designed to reach the appropriate recipients. Effective notice programs require more than broad dissemination; they require thoughtful planning tailored to the intended audience. By addressing these factors early in the settlement process, parties can improve notice effectiveness while increasing the likelihood of judicial approval.

Planning a class action settlement involving minors? Contact Kroll Settlement Administration to discuss a tailored approach to notice, claims administration and distribution that addresses the needs of your class members and their parents or guardians.