Lingo Telecom, as a simple phone company, doesn’t belong as a defendant in the lawsuit that alleges political consultant Steve Kramer hired robocall broadcaster Life Corp. to send thousands of robocalls two days before the Jan. 23 New Hampshire primary to people they thought were likely Democratic voters, said Lingo’s motion Monday (docket 1:24-cv-00073) in U.S. District Court for New Hampshire in Concord to dismiss the March 14 complaint.
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.
NetChoice seeks a preliminary injunction blocking Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes (R) and Katherine Hass, director of Utah’s Division of Consumer Protection, from enforcing the state’s newly enacted Minor Protection in Social Media Act when it takes effect Oct. 1, said its motion Friday (docket 2:23-cv-00911) in U.S. District Court for Utah in Salt Lake City. The statute “is an unconstitutional restriction on minors’ and adults’ ability to access and engage in protected speech,” it said. It “impermissibly regulates the conditions under which minors and adults can access certain websites and how those websites facilitate, disseminate, and display protected speech,” it said. The entire statute violates the First Amendment and the due process clause “because its definition of what entities are covered is unconstitutional,” it said. Parts of the statute also “independently violate” the First Amendment and the due process clause and are federally preempted under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, it said. It’s the second time Utah has enacted a law “violating bedrock constitutional principles of free speech” in attempting to regulate minors’ access to social media, it said. After Utah enacted 2023’s Social Media Regulation Act, NetChoice sued and moved to preliminarily enjoin that law’s enforcement, it said. Utah responded by repealing its 2023 law and replacing it in part with the new statute, it said. But the newly enacted statute “suffers from many of the same flaws ... while at the same time creating new ones,” it said. The statute regulates websites’ ability to publish and distribute speech to minors and speech by minors, it said. It also regulates minors’ ability to produce and receive speech and adults’ access to speech, it said. Minors are entitled to a significant measure of First Amendment protection, said NetChoice. Governments can’t burden adults’ right to access protected speech “in their efforts to regulate the speech appropriate for minors,” it said. The court “should reach the same result as courts across the country that have enjoined similar attempts to regulate online speech,” it said. “Regrettably, Utah’s government has chosen to double down on its misguided laws that thwart parents, undermine the state's dynamic creator economy, jeopardize the data security of its citizens and violate their constitutional rights,” said Chris Marchese, director of the NetChoice Litigation Center, in a statement Friday. Utahns, not the government, “should be able to determine how they and their families use technology,” he said.
A researcher who developed a browser extension that would allow Facebook users to “turn off their newsfeed” preemptively has sued Meta, seeking a judicial declaration that his software tool is “immunized from legal liability” under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta's (D) answering brief March 13 in defense of AB-587, the state's social media transparency law, "does nothing to change the key facts and law that compel reversal" in X's favor, said the company's reply brief Wednesday (docket 24-271) in the 9th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court in support of that reversal.
The district court properly dismissed with prejudice five counts of Hadona Diep and Ryumei Nagao's complaint against Apple for injuries caused by a malicious app called Toast Plus that they downloaded from the App Store, said a 9th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court panel memorandum Wednesday (docket 22-16514). That's because those counts were barred by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, said the memorandum. But the U.S. District Court for Northern California erred by dismissing the plaintiffs’ three consumer protection claims with prejudice and without leave to amend, said the memorandum. Because the plaintiffs could conceivably cure the “pleading deficiencies” in the consumer protection claims, they “should have been afforded the opportunity to amend their complaint,” it said. And because the district court’s denial of leave to amend those claims “was premised on legal error,” the panel vacated the district court's judgment as to those claims, and remanded with instructions to grant the plaintiffs “leave to amend their complaint as to those claims,” it said. Circuit Judges Sidney Thomas and Morgan Christen and 7th Circuit Judge David Hamilton, by designation, sat on the panel.
The federal government can encourage and even coerce social media platforms into moderating content without violating the First Amendment when there’s compelling public interest, conservative and liberal Supreme Court justices agreed Monday.
Amazon is responsible for the decimation of legitimate companies like Planet Green that supply genuinely remanufactured and recycled printer ink cartridges, said Planet Green’s opening brief Friday (docket 23-4434) in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It's seeking to reverse the district court’s dismissal of its fraud complaint against Amazon on grounds that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shields Amazon from liability (see 2312290030). Amazon is the dominant source of foreign-made “clone” printer ink cartridges -- newly manufactured products that are misrepresented to consumers as remanufactured and recycled, when they aren’t, said Planet Green. Amazon imports the falsely labeled clone cartridges from overseas, stores them in its warehouses and distributes them to consumers throughout the U.S., said the brief. It takes "title" to them and “itself sells them directly to consumers in packaging and bearing labels that falsely identifies the clone cartridges as remanufactured or recycled,” it said. Amazon also promotes them through its own statements over the Amazon website, via email and on third-party internet platforms, it said. It also “participates extensively” in the promotion and sale of the clone cartridges by third-party sellers on its website, and “profits handsomely from those sales,” it said. On Section 230, the district court wrongly found that Amazon was entitled to “complete immunity” from Planet Green’s action, “even though its claims arise in significant part from statements, sales, and conduct by Amazon itself that do not constitute the publication of third-party statements over Amazon’s website,” it said. The court also held that Amazon couldn’t be held liable for false and misleading product listings, it said. The district court ultimately gave Amazon a “get-out-of-jail-free card” that would allow it to disregard “any legal obligation to avoid deceiving consumers about printer ink cartridges,” it said. That result “twists” Section 230, which is a statute “focused on limiting liability for the publication of third party statements on the internet, beyond recognition,” it said: “It must be reversed.”
NetChoice wants the California Court of Appeal for the 2nd Appellate District to reverse a trial court’s opinion “that would undermine Section 230’s protections for free discourse online," said its amicus brief Wednesday (docket B335533) with the Chamber of Progress and Team Awareness Combating Overdose, a nonprofit fighting accidental drug overdoses among young adults.
It’s possible social media platforms could be considered common carriers when delivering emails or direct messages, the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative justices said Monday.