The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s summary judgment in favor of Santa Fe, New Mexico, denying wireless ISP NMSurf's challenge that the city’s 2% franchise fee for installing a wireline fiber network in a public right-of-way is preempted by sections 253 and 332 of the Communications Act, in an order and judgment Tuesday (docket 22-2131).
The “majority view” among the appellate courts requires “consideration of the economies of scale when addressing attorneys’ fees awarded in class action settlements exceeding $100 million,” said the statement of issues filed Monday (docket 23-2744) in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by objector-appellant Cassie Hampe. She’s pursuing the appeal to protest what she argues are “windfall” attorneys’ fees doled out in the class settlement in the 47-case multidistrict litigation arising from T-Mobile’s 2021 data breach.
The U.S. Supreme Court should grant the cert petitions of NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association challenging the restrictions in the Florida and Texas social media platforms’ content moderation laws on First Amendment grounds, said Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar in an amicus brief Monday (dockets 22-277 and 22-555).
Four months ago, U.S. District Judge Manish Shah for Northern Illinois rejected the FTC’s “unprecedented effort” to use the “substantial-assistance” provision of the Telemarketing Sales Rule “to impose novel liability on Walmart for processing money transfers at the request of customers who later claimed that they had been defrauded by third-party criminals,” the retailer said. It filed a memorandum of law Friday (docket 1:22-cv-03372) in support of its motion to dismiss the FTC’s June 30 amended complaint for failure to state a claim.
Montana’s TikTok ban, SB-419, is “both unprecedented and unconstitutional” and “a direct restriction on protected expression and association,” said an ACLU and Electronic Freedom Foundation amicus brief Friday (docket 9:23-cv-00061) in support of the plaintiffs' motions for a preliminary injunction to block Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen (R) from enforcing the statute when it takes effect Jan. 1 (see 2307070002).
A permanent injunction barring Internet Archive from scanning print copies of physical books and lending the digital copies to users of IA’s website without the publishers’ permission would take effect immediately under a proposed consent judgment IA and four book publishers sent Friday in a letter (docket 1:20-cv-04160) to U.S. District Judge John Koeltl for Southern New York in Manhattan. Koeltl granted summary judgment for copyright infringement March 24 and gave the parties until April 7 to propose the appropriate procedure to determine the judgment to be entered in the case (see 2303270006).
Verizon seeks expedited review of its allegations against Ocean City, New Jersey, for its “unreasonable and unsupportable” denial of Verizon’s application for “minor site plan approval” to build and install a personal wireless services facility, said its complaint Friday (docket 1:23-cv-04370) in U.S. District Court for New Jersey in Camden. The facility consists of antennas and related equipment and cabling on the roof of and on the ground adjacent to an existing two-story commercial building at the property in town, it said.
5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Don Willett confronted DOJ attorney Daniel Tenny with questions during oral argument rebuttal Thursday (see 2308100066) about the distinctions between outright government threats to pressure social media to censor content, as would be barred by the district court’s July 4 injunction, and more subtle forms of persuasion that may or may not be barred. The injunction is stayed, pending DOJ’s 5th Circuit appeal, and the government is asking the court to reverse it. Willett, a President Donald Trump 2018 appointee, specifically asked Tenny for DOJ’s view on whether President Joe Biden’s July 2021 statement that social media platforms were “killing people” by spreading COVID-19 vaccine disinformation was the type of government rhetoric that the injunction would prevent. There was “no threat in that statement,” said Willett, but it was “powerful nonetheless.” Tenny agrees that “it may be a powerful statement,” he told Willett. “So the legal question then would be, is it proper for a district court to say that the president can’t make powerful statements, trying to persuade the public what people should or should not do?” It’s correct that Biden isn’t subject to the injunction, said Tenny. But if a White House press secretary “said that about the president’s views, that would be subject to it,” he said. “It’s extraordinary to say, if the president’s view is that certain conduct of disseminating information is harming the public safety of the United States of America, that the press secretary cannot express that view,” he said. If statements like those are backed by a threat, “that’s different,” he said. “But that’s not what happened in this case,” he said.
Comcast’s preliminary injunction showing “is virtually unrebutted” in its attempt to block MaxLinear from walking away from its contractual obligations to supply chips for Comcast’s broadband gateways (see 2305300045), said Comcast’s reply memorandum of law Thursday (docket 1:23-cv-04436) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan in further support of the injunction. A hearing on Comcast’s injunction motion is set for Sept. 13 at noon EDT (see 2307180044).
The several Computer & Communications Industry Association members “directly regulated” by Montana’s TikTok ban (SB-419) will have their “core First Amendment rights” infringed unless the law is enjoined, said the association’s amicus brief Thursday (docket 9:23-cv-00056) in U.S. District Court for Montana in Missoula. CCIA filed the brief in support of the preliminary injunction the plaintiffs seek to block Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen (R) from enforcing SB-419 when it takes effect Jan. 1.