Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1496_d18f.pdf
Page Number: 35

Cite as:  598 U. S. ____ (2023) 

29 

Opinion of the Court 

with their millions or billions of other users—and their un-
disputed lack of intent to support ISIS.  See id., at 910. 

Taken as a whole, the Ninth Circuit’s analytic approach
thus  elided  the  fundamental  question  of  aiding-and-
abetting liability: Did defendants consciously, voluntarily, 
and culpably participate in or support the relevant wrong-
doing?  As we have explained above, the answer in this case 
is no.  Plaintiffs allege only that defendants supplied gen-
erally  available  virtual  platforms  that  ISIS  made  use  of,
and that defendants failed to stop ISIS despite knowing it 
was using those platforms.  Given the lack of nexus between 
that  assistance  and  the  Reina  attack,  the  lack  of  any  de-
fendant intending to assist ISIS, and the lack of any sort of 
affirmative  and  culpable  misconduct  that  would  aid  ISIS, 
plaintiffs’ claims fall far short of plausibly alleging that de-
fendants aided and abetted the Reina attack. 

C 

That leaves the set of allegations specific to Google.  As 
explained above, plaintiffs allege that Google reviewed and 
approved  ISIS  videos  on  YouTube  as  part  of  its  revenue-
sharing  system  and  thereby  shared  advertising  revenue 
with ISIS.  The Ninth Circuit briefly mentioned those alle-
gations  when  analyzing  plaintiffs’  complaint  here.    How-
ever, in addressing another, materially identical complaint,
the Ninth Circuit held that the same allegations “failed to 
state a claim for aiding-and-abetting liability” because they 
were “devoid of any allegations about how much assistance
Google  provided”  and  therefore  did  not  plausibly  allege 
“that Google’s assistance was substantial.”  Id., at 907. 

We think that the Ninth Circuit was correct in that hold-
ing.  The complaint here alleges nothing about the amount
of  money  that  Google  supposedly  shared  with  ISIS,  the 
number  of  accounts  approved  for  revenue  sharing,  or  the 
content of the videos that were approved.  It thus could be 
the case that Google approved only one ISIS-related video