The X platform is appealing to the 9th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court the Dec. 28 denial of its motion for a preliminary injunction to block California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) from enforcing AB-587, the state’s social media transparency law (see 2401020002), said its notice of appeal Friday (docket 2:23-cv-01939) in U.S. District Court for Eastern California in Sacramento. X sought to block AB-587's enforcement on grounds that it violates the First Amendment and that federal law preempts it. Denial of the injunction turned on X’s failure to establish its likelihood of success on the merits, said the memorandum and order signed by U.S. District Judge William Shubb.

The Oct. 6 data breach at 23andMe resulted in the publication of the data of a million users of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage and 100,000 users of Chinese ancestry, said a Jan. 4 letter from Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) to the online genetic testing company, released publicly Thursday. The information was sold on the dark web for $1 to $10 per individual account, Mayes said. Two weeks later, the data of another 4 million users was reportedly advertised on the same forum where the first set of data was published, she said. “The recent increase in all hate crimes across the country, especially antisemitic and anti-Asian hate crimes, means that this is a particularly dangerous time for the targeted sale of information of individuals identifying and belonging to specific racial or ethnic groups -- information that 23andMe profits from analyzing,” she said. Mayes requested information in 21 areas, including the company’s plans to prevent a recurrence of the breach, compensate affected consumers and provide data monitoring services, and its plans for use and disposal of affected users’ personally identifiable information.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Appeals Court scheduled oral argument for Feb. 16 at 10 a.m. in New York Attorney General Letitia James' (D) appeal to reverse the district court’s preliminary injunction that blocks her from enforcing Section 394-ccc, New York’s hateful conduct law, said a hearing notice Monday (docket 23-356). Each side will be apportioned 10 minutes for oral argument, said the notice. Section 394-ccc requires social media networks to give users a mechanism for reporting hateful conduct on the network (see 2310160001). To better inform users who wish to make use of a network’s report mechanism, the law also requires networks to disclose a policy explaining how the network will respond to user reports, it said. Three online platforms are challenging Section 394-ccc on grounds that the statute’s requirements infringe their First Amendment rights.

U.S. District Judge Mark Mastroianni for Massachusetts in Springfield scheduled a hearing for Feb. 1 at 11 a.m. via videoconference on the state’s May 22 motion to dismiss the March 20 first amended complaint of six plaintiffs challenging the state’s COVID-19 contact-tracing app on constitutional grounds, said a text-only order Monday (docket 3:22-cv-11936). The plaintiffs allege that the Massachusetts Department of Public Health worked with Google to secretly install the app on more than a million Android smartphones in the state without the device owners’ knowledge or permission. Massachusetts contends the complaint should be dismissed for failure to state a claim and for lack of jurisdiction.

The purpose of HB-1186, Indiana’s “buffer law,” is “strikingly clear” in preventing interference with police duties, said Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita’s (R) opposition Friday (docket 1:23-cv-01805) in U.S. District Court for Southern Indiana in Indianapolis to the Nov. 3 motion of seven media organizations for a preliminary injunction to block Rokita from enforcing the statute (see 2311060046). HB-1186, which took effect July 1, makes it a misdemeanor for journalists to come within 25 feet of police officers on active duty, but the law’s substance can’t “reasonably be said to address anything other than such interference,” said Rokita’s opposition. Because the buffer law doesn’t regulate First Amendment activity, “it passes all levels of scrutiny,” it said. Its actual enforcement “shows no anti-press application,” it said. It has never been enforced against the plaintiffs, “who complain only of the long-used media staging areas” and of law enforcement’s “common-law discretion in requiring space when necessary,” it said. “Even if their speculation that the law is their woes’ cause did have merit, the facts show those woes are not First Amendment-related,” it said.

The opening brief of Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen (R) is due Jan. 31 in his 9th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court appeal to vacate the district court’s preliminary injunction that blocks him from enforcing SB-419, Montana’s statewide TikTok ban (see 2401030007), said a time schedule notice Wednesday (docket 24-34). The answering brief of five TikTok users and TikTok itself is due Feb. 28, said the notice. The plaintiffs in the two consolidated cases against Knudsen argued that SB-419 violates the First Amendment and the Constitution’s supremacy and commerce clauses. U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy’s opinion and order held that the plaintiffs “have shown a likelihood of success as to the merits of each claim,” and that a preliminary injunction on the Jan. 1 effective date of SB-419 was “warranted.”

The office of Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) reached a settlement with Cox Communications totaling more than $13 million to resolve a complaint in which the state alleged the company failed to adequately disclose additional fees to customers, said the office Thursday. Under the settlement, Cox agrees to pay $10 million directly to the state and to distribute $3.04 million to current and former customers who signed up for television services between January 2017 and March 2021, it said. The settlement requires Cox to “accurately and clearly disclose any and all material terms or conditions to consumers at the time of sale,” said the AG’s office. It also agrees to refrain from imposing any “unilateral pricing increases” on its residential customers if Cox advertised that those customers would have “fixed monthly pricing,” it said. Cox didn’t immediately comment on the settlement. But a consent decree filed Wednesday in Maricopa County Superior Court said that while Cox has agreed to offer the $3.04 million in payments to eligible consumers, it denies that those payments “constitute restitution for any unlawful practice.”

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen (R) waited only until the first court date of 2024 to appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court the district court’s Nov. 30 granting of a preliminary injunction blocking him from enforcing SB-419, Montana’s statewide TikTok ban, when it took effect Jan. 1 (see 2312010003), said Knudsen’s notice of appeal Tuesday in U.S. District Court for Montana in Missoula. The plaintiffs in two consolidated cases, including multiple TikTok users (docket 9:23-cv-00056), plus TikTok itself (docket 9:23-cv-00061), argued that SB-419 violates the First Amendment and the Constitution’s supremacy and commerce clauses. U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy’s opinion and order held that the plaintiffs “have shown a likelihood of success as to the merits of each claim,” and that a preliminary injunction on the effective date of SB-419 was “warranted.” Despite the injunction, Knudsen’s office said it was looking forward “to presenting the complete legal argument to defend the law that protects Montanans from the Chinese Communist Party obtaining and using their data.”

T-Mobile is asking the Mississippi Supreme Court, through an interlocutory appeal, to reverse a lower state court decision affirming Jasper County’s denial of T-Mobile’s request for a statutory tax exemption on all its qualified broadband equipment, said T-Mobile’s petition Tuesday (docket 2023-3967). Since the broadband exemption was first enacted in 2002, counties throughout Mississippi, including Jasper, have granted T-Mobile the exemption, it said. But for the 2022 tax year, Jasper, acting on “the erroneous legal advice” of a consultant, Cell Tower Solutions, for the first time denied T-Mobile the broadband exemption “for every single item of T-Mobile's equipment that undisputedly meets the plain language” of the statute, it said. Jasper “has never disputed that T-Mobile's equipment at issue meets the criteria” of the broadband exemption, it said. The county’s only reason for its “unprecedented denial” was that T-Mobile's equipment didn’t meet the exemption’s "intent," it said. When T-Mobile challenged the denial in state court, the county’s only defense was that it simply didn’t know if the exemption applied, it said. But “the failure to know something is not evidence,” it said. AT&T filed a similar challenge earlier in the week (see 2312260001).

Nexstar, Scripps, Tegna and four other media organizations still can’t demonstrate standing to challenge the constitutionality of Indiana’s “buffer law” because there’s “no credible threat” of the law's being enforced against them, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) said in a reply Friday (docket 1:23-cv-01805) in U.S. District Court for Southern Indiana in further support of his Dec. 1 motion to dismiss their complaint (see 2312040003). The buffer law, HB-1186, makes it a misdemeanor for journalists to come within 25 feet of police officers on active duty. In altering their factual assertions “in a seeming attempt to establish standing,” the media organizations reveal “a recognition of the frailty of purported standing” where the buffer law hasn't “chilled” them, said the AG’s reply. They now “do allege chill,” yet still fail to meaningfully explain how the buffer law affects that chill, it said. Though this “major change in factual assertions is improper” and shouldn’t be permitted, their standing arguments “possess myriad further flaws,” it said. The media organizations “undermine their standing claims through an inadequate attempt to pack loose facts into shifting theories,” it said.