Exploitation of children has become central to social media companies’ profitability, alleged Pittsburgh Public Schools in a redacted public nuisance lawsuit Thursday (docket 2:23-cv-577) in U.S. District Court for Western Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh against Meta, Snap, TikTok and Google.

U.S. District Judge David Horan for Northern Texas in Dallas signed a memorandum opinion and order Tuesday (docket 3:22-cv-00052) granting in part and denying in part Telephone Consumer Protection Act plaintiff Steve Noviello’s motion for an award of extra damages arising from Telephone Consumer Protection Act violations. Horan limited Noviello's recovery to the $6,500 in damages a jury awarded him in a Feb. 28 verdict in his favor for 13 unlawful calls or texts made to a number listed on the federal do not call registry since 2016.

Paris-based Nexway Sasu et al. worked with telemarketers making misrepresentations to consumers about the performance and security of their computers in a “technical support scam,” alleged the DOJ in a Monday fraud complaint (docket 1:23-cv-00900) in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The appeal of Darrell Seybold, the former Charter Communications sales manager who alleges he was terminated for exposing Charter’s unlawful conduct, in violation of the whistleblower protections in the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act (see 2302200002), “is exactly the type of case for which SOX was intended,” said his opening brief Monday in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (docket 23-10104). U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr for Northern Texas in Dallas dismissed Seybold's claims in a January order for lack of specificity in his allegations.

Meta, Snap, Google and TikTok could have avoided harming plaintiffs and their students, said a March 28 lawsuit (docket 23STCV06685) made publicly available this week in California Superior Court in Los Angeles by Baldwin, Montgomery, and Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, public schools and the state of Alabama .

Senior U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater for Northern Texas in Dallas granted debt collector Mercantile Adjustment Bureau’s motion to dismiss Sage Telecom’s phone solicitation complaint for failure to state a claim on which relief may be granted, said his signed memorandum and order Tuesday (docket 3:22-cv-02737). Fitzwater did grant Sage leave to file a second amended complaint within 28 days.

Defendants in the social media censorship lawsuit Missouri v. Biden sought to “correct the record” on plaintiffs’ request for consolidation with the Missouri et al. v. Biden case against President Joe Biden and some 60 individuals and government agencies pending in the same court, said a Tuesday response (docket 3:22-cv-01213) in U.S. District Court of Western Louisiana in Monroe.

California businesses asked a state court to delay enforcement of the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) until one year after the California Privacy Protection Agency adopts final rules.

The March 27 opinion from U.S. District Judge Manish Shah for Northern Illinois in Chicago in FTC v. Walmart (docket 1:22-cv-3372) supports the FTC’s opposition to Kochava’s motion to dismiss the agency’s privacy complaint for failure to state a claim, said the agency’s notice of supplemental authority Monday (docket 2:22-cv-00377) in U.S. District Court for Idaho. Shah denied in part Walmart’s motion to dismiss an FTC enforcement action.

Here are Communications Litigation Today's top stories from last week, in case you missed them. Each can be found by searching on its title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.