A proposed $400 million settlement over TikTok’s handling of children’s data faces a new obstacle after a federal judge said he was inclined to preserve a 2019 privacy order rather than release the company from its remaining obligations.

U.S. District Judge George H. Wu in Los Angeles questioned whether the government and TikTok had shown that ending the older consent decree would provide a durable remedy. He scheduled a hearing for Monday, according to Reuters, leaving a central condition of the deal unresolved.

A conditional settlement meets judicial resistance

TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, agreed in August to resolve federal allegations that the platform violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and its implementing rule. The proposed structure calls for a $300 million payment and another $100 million if the court vacates the decree imposed on Musical.ly, TikTok’s predecessor.

The Justice Department described the agreement as one of the largest recoveries in a COPPA case. It also said TikTok had changed its ownership, management, compliance functions and privacy practices since the government filed suit in 2024. The department emphasized that the resolved claims were allegations and that there had been no determination of liability.

Wu’s tentative position does not amount to a final rejection of the entire settlement. It focuses on the request to terminate the earlier decree, which is tied to one-quarter of the announced payment. His concern is whether the parties have supplied enough detail to show that the proposed substitute protections would last and would respond to the changed circumstances they cite.

The unusual two-part payment makes the decree more than a procedural footnote. If the court refuses to vacate it, TikTok could remain subject to the older oversight regime while the parties decide whether the $300 million portion can proceed on its own. Public descriptions of the agreement do not settle that question, and neither TikTok nor the Justice Department immediately commented on Wu’s tentative decision.

The 2019 decree still carries weight

The underlying order dates to a case against Musical.ly, the short-video service that became TikTok. The FTC alleged that Musical.ly knew many children used the app but collected names, email addresses and other information without obtaining parental consent. The company paid $5.7 million, then the largest civil penalty in a children’s privacy case.

Money was only part of that resolution. The decree required compliance with COPPA, removal of videos made by children under 13 and continuing reporting and recordkeeping. Reuters reported that those obligations run through 2029. Preserving the order would therefore keep an enforceable layer of oversight in place beyond the new cash settlement.

That history matters because the 2024 case alleged repeat violations. An Associated Press account of the settlement said the government accused TikTok of collecting data from users under 13 without parental permission, failing to honor some deletion requests and retaining accounts it knew belonged to children.

What COPPA requires

COPPA covers services directed to children under 13 and other online services that know they are collecting personal information from children in that age group. The FTC rule generally requires notice to parents and verifiable parental consent before collection, along with safeguards governing how children’s data is used, retained and deleted.

The TikTok dispute is therefore not simply about whether young users can open accounts. It also concerns what information a platform gathers once it knows, or has reason to know, that a user is a child; whether parents can exercise deletion rights; and whether compliance systems are strong enough to detect underage use at scale.

The government argued in announcing the settlement that TikTok’s later operational changes strengthened age controls and parental oversight. Wu’s tentative ruling suggests that broad descriptions of improvement may not be enough to justify dissolving a court order. The distinction is important: voluntary practices can change, while a consent decree remains enforceable by a federal court.

Those changes occurred alongside a broader restructuring of TikTok’s U.S. business. The company has pointed to new ownership and governance arrangements as evidence that its American operations now function differently. The privacy case, however, turns on child-data practices and compliance systems, not solely on who owns the platform. That is why the court is seeking a closer connection between organizational changes and the protections that would replace the decree.

What remains unresolved

The Monday hearing will determine whether the parties can provide a more specific basis for ending the 2019 decree or whether the judge will preserve it. The answer could affect the final $100 million and may require the government and company to revise how the settlement is structured.

Even if Wu keeps the decree in place, that would not by itself establish that TikTok committed the violations alleged in 2024. Settlement documents commonly resolve claims without an admission or judicial finding. Nor does the judge’s preliminary view necessarily disturb every other part of the agreement.

But the court’s scrutiny creates a practical test for federal enforcement. Regulators presented the settlement as a large recovery coupled with corporate reforms. The judge is asking whether those reforms are sufficiently concrete to replace existing, enforceable supervision. For parents and other platforms, the result may clarify whether large payments can substitute for long-term compliance duties in major children’s privacy cases.