You’ve been served — on TikTok. Baltimore teacher uses social media to sue right-wing influencer.

First, they tried serving her the lawsuit at a luxury condo in South Florida. Then they attempted to find her at her business, only to discover that it used a virtual mailing address. When that failed, they sent the court documents to multiple email addresses and via certified mail to elicit a response.

Those efforts proved futile.

So the legal team for Alexa Sciuto, a Baltimore teacher, stand-up comic and LGBTQIA+ advocate, sought court permission to serve her defamation lawsuit against Libs of TikTok founder Chaya Raichik another way: social media.

Baltimore County Circuit Judge Ralph Sapia signed an order on June 23 that allowed Sciuto’s attorneys to serve Raichik by posting at least once per week on TikTok, and tagging @LibsOfTikTok, for three consecutive weeks. They were also required to mail a legal notice to several addresses and publish it in a local newspaper.

“I don’t want to win against a party who doesn’t show up,” said Nick McDaniels, one of Sciuto’s attorneys. “I think that’s a core principle of our civil justice system: that all parties that are involved in a dispute have the opportunity to be heard in front of the court.”

As technology has continued to advance, judges across the United States have demonstrated a willingness to authorize service of lawsuits through social media after traditional methods are unsuccessful.

Sciuto filed her lawsuit in 2025 against Raichik, five Republican delegates and the chairs of the Carroll County and Talbot County chapters of Moms for Liberty.

The legal fight started after Sciuto attended a parents’ rights event in 2024 in Towson. During a Q&A session, she asked, “What does woke mean?” and later posted a video of the exchange on her TikTok.

Later in a post on X, Kit Hart, the chair of the Carroll County chapter of Moms for Liberty, wrote, “Hey, haters! Thanks for all of the comments! You’re really boosting my exposure so I appreciate you!” Sciuto then quote-tweeted her and replied, “Officer I swear I didn’t mean to murder her.” She clarified that her remarks were rhetorical.

But Dels. Kathy Szeliga, Ryan Nawrocki, Robin Grammer Jr. and Lauren Arikan accused Sciuto in a letter to her employer at the time, Baltimore County Public Schools, of making a death threat and called for her immediate termination. Sciuto, who had accepted a position as a Spanish teacher in Baltimore City Public Schools, submitted her resignation.

Libs of TikTok reposted the letter and also implied that Sciuto was showing her students “LGBT propaganda.” Raichik could not be reached for comment.

In the lawsuit, Sciuto’s legal team argues that the statements are false and have damaged her personal and professional reputations.

In Maryland, McDaniels said, attorneys must make a good-faith effort to serve lawsuits in a conventional way, such as hiring a professional process server to hand people legal paperwork.

The wily ways of process servers are well-documented in movies and real life. They’ve posed as delivery people to get to the front door. Others have entered office buildings dressed in business attire to blend in before pouncing. When one target was especially evasive, a process server paddled up in a kayak with papers in hand.

The phenomenon may have reached a kind of peak in terms of boldness when one hunted down Basketball Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal to hand him papers as he was broadcasting a nationally televised NBA playoff game.

McDaniels said one of his process servers, after multiple attempts, expressed concern that Raichik was an evader.

So McDaniels said he started thinking about possible alternative means of service. What better way to serve a social media influencer than through social media?

His law firm, LewisMcDaniels, created a TikTok account solely for the purpose of publishing the legal notice after the judge gave the OK.

Federal judges in states including New York, Florida and Texas over the years have approved service of lawsuits through other forms of social media, including Facebook.

In 2013, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer allowed the Federal Trade Commission to use Facebook to serve three people and two companies in India that the agency alleged were engaged in a fraudulent tech support scheme.

“The Court acknowledges that service by Facebook is a relatively novel concept, and that it is conceivable that defendants will not in fact receive notice by this means,” Engelmayer wrote in a 12-page opinion.

But Engelmayer noted that he was requiring service through email as well. As technology advances, he said, courts must be open to these kinds of requests “rather than dismissing them out of hand as novel.”

Several states have even created rules that allow service through social media in certain cases, according to the National Center for State Courts.

For instance, Maryland has a rule that allows people to seek permission to carry out service by email, text message or social media in child-support modification cases.

Will Newman, an attorney at Newman Litigation in Brooklyn, New York, believes courts have become increasingly accepting of these alternative mechanisms.

But Newman, who recently wrote about electronic service for one of the American Bar Association Litigation Section’s magazines, noted that the type authorized in the Libs of TikTok lawsuit — publication — isn’t new.

One of the first cases that law students study when learning about civil procedure is an 1878 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that involves publication of a notice in a newspaper, he said.

“For a long time, this has existed,” Newman said. “What’s relatively new is doing it by email and social media.”

He said courts will generally approve a method of service if it provides actual notice to people and gives them a reasonable opportunity to be heard.

In his experience, Newman said, courts have been open to these kinds of proposals if they’re coupled with other approaches such as sending an email and publishing a notice in a newspaper.

Judges, he said, are frustrated when people look like they’re evading service — or making themselves deliberately hard to serve. Lawyers continue to push into new frontiers.

Newman represented a client who successfully convinced a judge to approve service in yet another way: cryptocurrency.