D.C. Circuit Affirms Lower Court's Dismissal of States’ Antitrust Suit vs. Meta

The U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit, in a Thursday opinion, affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the antitrust complaint brought against Meta by 47 states, plus the District of Columbia and Guam. The states had alleged that Meta’s Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions harmed competition, as did Meta’s restrictions on app developers that linked to Facebook.

The states’ lawsuit “is not only odd, but old,” said the opinion (docket 21-7078). The litigation is odd because it concerns an industry “that has had rapid growth and innovation with no end in sight,” it said. It’s old because the states’ causes of action “accrued in 2012 when Facebook acquired Instagram and in 2014 when Facebook acquired WhatsApp,” it said. Yet the states didn’t file their complaint until December 2020, it said. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia held that the states’ long delays were unreasonable and unjustified as a matter of law, and the D.C. Circuit agreed.