A yearslong case involving the mother of a popular YouTube star and 11 teen content creators who accused her of abuse and exploitation came to an end Tuesday after the parties reached a $1.85 million settlement, according to attorneys for the plaintiffs.

Tiffany Smith was sued in January 2022 by the group of teenagers who were regularly featured on her daughter Piper Rockelle’s popular YouTube channel, which at the time had 8.85 million followers.

The creators alleged that Smith, 43, intentionally inflicted emotional distress while she held a position of “care and control” over them in the production of content for Rockelle’s YouTube channel. They said they endured physical and emotional injuries from “harassment, molestation, and abuse,” according to the complaint.

Some of the plaintiffs also said they weren’t compensated for the use of their likenesses to promote Rockelle’s content, and all of them alleged they weren’t paid for their work and appearances, though they say they weren’t promised payment.

In a statement announcing the settlement, the plaintiffs’ attorney, Matt Sarelson, of the Dhillon Law Group, commended them for their bravery and described what they went through as “grotesque.”

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times published in December 2022, Smith said she didn’t consider herself the plaintiffs’ employer at the time the videos were recorded with Rockelle. Smith later acquired a permit to work with minors, she told the newspaper. Smith countersued last year for $30 million, accusing the plaintiffs’ mothers of conspiring to extort money by making false sexual abuse allegations. She voluntarily abandoned the lawsuit before the mothers responded.

The plaintiffs, who are all still minors, had originally requested roughly $2 million in damages apiece, totaling at least $22 million, from Smith and her boyfriend, Hunter Hill, who is also listed as a defendant in the lawsuit and is part of the settlement, according to the Dhillon Law Group. The complaint identified him as the director and editor of Rockelle’s YouTube channel.

A spokesperson for the plaintiffs’ law firm said Smith denied wrongdoing as part of the settlement terms. An attorney for Smith and Hill declined to comment.

In the December 2022 interview with the Times, Hill denied claims of abuse in the lawsuit and told it he didn’t understand why the plaintiffs were so upset because “these kids were making more money than my mom makes in an entire year.”

Smith also said that once the channels were monetized, the creators were earning “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

The 11 young creators were on Rockelle’s channel as part of a cast known as the “Piper Squad.” In videos on Rockelle’s channel, which now has 12 million subscribers, the creators participated in various pranks and challenges. Despite their ages, the plaintiffs said in the lawsuit, they were asked to stage romantic “crushes” on one another for content purposes.

The young creators’ claims helped shed light on the lucrative and largely unregulated world of child YouTube stardom, which some have likened to the Wild West.

Many have publicly called on the industry to put regulations in place to help protect child content creators. The Fair Labor Standards Act, a 1938 law addressing “excessive child labor,” has not been updated to include child influencers. The popular YouTube family channel genre — which has been considered a lucrative business because of ad revenue and brand collaboration opportunities — has been widely criticized in recent years for relying on children to create monetized content.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom — joined by singer Demi Lovato, a former child star — signed two bills this month to protect the earnings of child influencers and content creators. A handful of other states, including Illinois, which was the first, have also introduced legislation in hope of protecting child content creators.

Angela Sharbino, a parent of one of the plaintiffs, said that they “didn’t pursue this lawsuit to change the industry, but to bring awareness that predators can be found in any field.”

“This was never about the money — it was about holding an individual accountable, telling the truth, and taking a step toward healing,” she said in a statement. “All of these kids have now moved on from the ‘Squad’ and are closing this chapter of their lives.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

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What else will change?

‘Flexibility’

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The United States consistently fails to ban and regulate harmful chemicals, ProPublica reported in December 2022. Neil Bedi, Sharon Lerner, and Kathleen McGrory explained how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the chemical industry are responsible for causing the United States to become “a global laggard in chemical regulation.”

Michal Freedhoff, the EPA’s head of chemical regulation, conceded to decades of regulatory failure, blaming the agency’s inaction on barriers created by the Trump administration, including funding and staffing shortages. However, ProPublica’s investigation revealed broader issues at play. Through interviews with environmental experts and analysis of a half century’s worth of legislation, lawsuits, EPA documents, oral histories, chemical databases, and regulatory records, ProPublica uncovered the longstanding institutional failure to protect Americans from toxic chemicals.

Although the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) gave the EPA regulatory authority to ban or restrict the use of chemicals that pose serious health risks, the chemical industry’s involvement in drafting the bill was so extensive that one EPA administrator joked that the law “should have been named after the DuPont executive who went over the text line by line,” ProPublica reported. The law required the EPA “to always choose regulations that were the ‘least burdensome’ to companies. These two words would doom American chemical regulation for decades,” Bedi, Lerner, and McGrory wrote.

In 2016, Congress amended the law to remove the “least burdensome” language, but that statute too was seen as “company-friendly.” Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) stated that the American Chemistry Council (ACC), an industry lobbying group, was an originator of the draft bill, a claim that has been denied by the ACC and a congressional sponsor of the bill, ProPublica reported.

In the meantime, over sixty thousand chemicals remained on the market for years without being vetted for health risks. Some toxins that were originally exempted from regulation include asbestos and trichloroethylene (TCE). ProPublica noted that “asbestos is only one of many toxic substances that are linked to problems like cancers, genetic mutations and fetal harm and that other countries have banned, but the United States has not.”

After the 2016 removal of the “least burdensome” language, “the EPA named TCE as one of its 10 high-priority chemicals and tried to propose a ban on high-risk uses that year,” according to the ProPublica report. But after industry complaints, the proposal was shelved by the Trump administration, which decided instead to “reassess” TCE. ProPublica noted that in July 2022, the EPA’s draft assessment “found that 52 of 54 uses of TCE present an unreasonable risk to human health.”

Chemicals are difficult to regulate because the United States still uses a “risk-based” approach in which chemicals are “innocent until proven guilty.” This approach “puts the burden on government officials to prove that a chemical poses unreasonable health risks before restricting it,” which can take years, ProPublica explained. By contrast, in 2007 the European Union (EU) “switched to a more ‘hazard-based’ approach, which puts the burden on chemical companies to prove that their products are safe.” Under this “no data, no market” approach, the EU has banned or restricted more than a thousand dangerous chemicals.

Another reason for lax US regulations is the burdensome process that encumbers even high-priority chemicals, including asbestos and TCE. Each chemical must undergo a lengthy assessment protocol, but the underfunded EPA cannot keep pace, especially in the face of industry resistance. “The whole regulatory process is designed to be slow and to be slowed down by those opposed to regulation,” said Joel Tickner, a leading expert on chemical policy who was interviewed by ProPublica, “Frankly, unless EPA doubled their size, they can’t do much with the resources they have.”

ProPublica also highlighted industry-friendly staffing practices at the EPA. Specifically, “the EPA has a long history of hiring scientists and top officials from the companies they are supposed to regulate, allowing industry to sway the agency’s science from the inside.” The revolving door contributes to “the sense that industry science is the best science, which is very much in line with regulators deferring to industry-funded studies showing there isn’t cause for concern,” said Alissa Cordner, author of Toxic Safety: Flame Retardants, Chemical Controversies, and Environmental Health, who was quoted by ProPublica.

In a related story, IFLScience reported in June 2023 on an Annals of Global Health study based on decades of secret industry documents about PFAS—so-called “forever chemicals”—showing that “the chemical industry just like the tobacco and oil industries were aware of the dangers of the product they were making but willingly suppressed the knowledge as it would hurt their bottom line.” Meanwhile, governments and people pay the price. According to a May 2023 article in DCReport, the global societal costs of PFAS alone are over $17 trillion per year.

A handful of corporate outlets have reported on the EPA’s slowness to regulate certain toxic chemicals, including the Washington Post and the New York Times [Note also: Timothy Puko, “EPA Struggles to Ban Asbestos, Other Chemicals Years After Congress Granted New Powers,” Washington Post, February 19, 2023; Eric Lipton, “Public Health vs. Economic Growth: Toxic Chemical Rules Pose Test for Biden,” New York Times, March 16, 2023], occasionally noting business opposition to proposed new rules and the downsides to industry. However, none have highlighted the systemic failures wrought by the EPA and the chemical industry.

Neil Bedi, Sharon Lerner, and Kathleen McGrory, “Why the U.S. Is Losing the Fight to Ban Toxic Chemicals,” ProPublica, December 14, 2022.

Student Researcher: Reagan Haynie (Loyola Marymount University)

Faculty Evaluator: Mickey Huff (Diablo Valley College)

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UK bosses will be able to fire new recruits after a warning of poor performance during a nine-month probation period, in a last-minute concession to business that will soften the impact of Labour’s flagship reforms to workers’ rights. 

Draft legislation published on Thursday sets out a swath of changes to UK employment law that together constitute the biggest overhaul in a generation. 

The Employment Rights bill will give shape to 28 of the roughly 70 measures promised by Sir Keir Starmer’s party before the election in its “Plan to Make Work Pay”.

These include a clampdown on zero hour contracts, stronger rights to work flexibly if feasible and curbs on employers’ use of fire and rehire tactics.

But the most contentious provision, day one protection against unfair dismissal, will be softened considerably under government proposals for a statutory probation period during which employers will have to follow only a “lighter touch” process to justify a dismissal. 

Ministers are planning to consult for several months on the maximum length of the probation period but are already minded to opt for nine months, according to officials. 

Many of the measures will be subject to further consultation to thrash out the details of secondary legislation needed to implement them, while other measures will be added to the bill at a later stage, or pursued separately in future by other means. 

As a result, the majority of the reforms will not take effect any earlier than 2026, the government confirmed.

Angela Rayner, deputy prime minister, is presenting the package as a way to “boost pay and productivity” in an economy “riven with insecurity”. Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, the umbrella body for the UK labour movement, described it as a “seismic shift” that would improve working life for millions of people. 

But businesses are alarmed at the cumulative impact of the reforms, and in particular by the scrapping of the current two-year qualifying period for unfair dismissal.

Tina McKenzie, policy chair at the Federation of Small Businesses trade body, described the bill as “a rushed job, clumsy, chaotic and poorly planned”.

The government has said the changes will help more than 1mn people working on contracts with no or few guaranteed hours, who will gain new rights to a contract reflecting their regular hours, and to notice or compensation when shifts are cancelled. 

An extra 30,000 fathers will benefit from a right to take paternity leave from the first day in a job, scrapping the current qualifying period.

The bill will also broaden coverage of statutory sick pay, strengthen trade unions’ role in the workplace, pave the way for collective bargaining in the care sector, establish a new agency to enforce employee rights and strengthen protections at work for new mothers, among other changes. 

A nine-month probation period is longer than Rayner initially envisaged and follows intense lobbying from businesses that had the backing of business secretary Jonathan Reynolds and chancellor Rachel Reeves.

While employers will still need to show they have acted fairly in dismissing a new hire, they will not need to follow the lengthy process typical at present when dismissing an employee of more than two years tenure. Giving written notice could suffice, officials suggested.

Details of how a probation period works will be subject to consultation, however, and will need to be set out in both secondary legislation and a separate code of conduct. This means the day one right will take effect in autumn 2026 at the earliest. 

Other consultations will look at how to determine workers’ regular working pattern, in order to offer them an appropriate contract, and how to ensure businesses only use fire and rehire when they are at genuine risk of going bust.