CEA Among Industry, Public Interest Groups Backing Google Bid Against Mississippi AG

Three coalitions of industry and public interest groups filed amicus briefs with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans Monday supporting Google's bid to sustain a preliminary injunction barring Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood from enforcing his subpoena of the company’s search practices. Hood, a Democrat, filed an appeal with the 5th Circuit in late March. That was after U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate ordered the preliminary injunction because there was a “substantial likelihood” that Google would prevail in its lawsuit against Hood on claims he violated the company’s First Amendment rights (see 1504010029). If Hood is “allowed to continue, the pressure tactics employed by the Attorney General here would send a dangerous message to large and small service providers, as well as the Internet users who rely on their platforms to communicate, learn, and organize online,” said the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Center for Democracy and Technology and other groups in a joint brief. “That message would stifle innovation, chill online speech, and flout the public’s First Amendment interest in an uncensored Internet.” The Computer & Communications Industry Association, CEA and Engine also urged the 5th Circuit to affirm the injunction. They said in a joint brief that “although state law enforcement officials are not wholly precluded from enforcing state laws that affect the Internet, Congress unambiguously intended to limit states’ ability to regulate Internet intermediaries’ display of third party content -- which is precisely what Attorney General Hood seeks to do here.” Hood “does not, and cannot, demonstrate any compelling interest in the wholesale gathering of information about a wide and disparate array of protected speech on Google’s various services,” the American Civil Liberties Union and its Mississippi chapter said in a joint brief. “Indeed, the subpoena seeks such a vast amount of information about so many people that by its very nature it cannot be narrowly tailored to any legitimate investigative need. As such, the subpoena is presumptively invalid.”