Government efforts to restrict minors from accessing online content “have repeatedly been struck down,” especially when they impede the First Amendment rights of adults as well, and Arkansas' social media age verification law “should meet the same fate,” said NetChoice. It filed a memorandum Friday (docket 5:23-cv-05105) in U.S. District Court for Western Arkansas in Fayetteville in support of its motion for a preliminary injunction to block Attorney General Tim Griffin (R) from enforcing the measure when it takes effect Sept. 1 (see 2306300001).

The plaintiffs in the two consolidated cases against SB-419, Montana’s statewide TikTok ban, filed nearly simultaneous motions Thursday in U.S. District Court for Montana in Missoula for preliminary injunctions to block Attorney General Austin Knudsen (R) from enforcing the measure when it takes effect Jan. 1. U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy’s June 28 consolidation order (see 2306290041) designated the May 17 complaint (docket 9:23-cv-00056) filed by six Montana TikTok influencers and users as the lead case, and the May 22 complaint filed by TikTok (docket 9:23-cv-00061) as the "member" case.

Twitter threatened to sue Meta for allegedly misappropriating Twitter’s trade secrets when building its new text-based social media app, Threads. Meta launched the new app Wednesday and had accumulated more than 70 million users by Friday.

The government faces “irreparable harm” with each day a preliminary injunction remains in effect preventing dozens of federal agencies from engaging in “a vast range of lawful and responsible conduct.” So said DOJ’s Thursday evening's memorandum (docket 3:22-cv-01213) in U.S. District Court for Western Louisiana in Monroe in support of the defendants’ motion to stay the injunction, pending appeal to the 5th U.S. Circut Court of Appeals. Judge Terry Doughty, a Donald Trump appointee, imposed the motion in an unusual July 4 ruling (see 2307050042).

The FCC “reasonably exercised” its statutory authority when it decided the pole attachment rate Duke Energy charged AT&T was unjust and unreasonable, said the commission’s responding brief Thursday (docket 22-2220) in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to the Duke and AT&T consolidated petitions for review. The FCC also properly decided AT&T should pay Duke a pole attachment rate that’s lower than the rate in their joint use agreement but higher than the rate paid by other companies that attach their lines to Duke’s poles, it said.

A 2018 anti-sex trafficking law that carved out liability protections for the tech industry doesn’t violate the First Amendment, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled Friday in docket 1:18-cv-01552.

Core Communications’ toll-free access charges are “improper” because Core doesn’t actually “perform the functions that are required” to bill those charges under its own tariff policies and applicable FCC rules and regulations, said AT&T’s June 30 memorandum (docket 2:21-cv-02771) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in support of its motion for summary judgment. Core is seeking to recover $11.4 million in unpaid access services charges from AT&T, which refused to pay, claiming nearly 100% of the calls that CoreTel affiliates in Delaware, New Jersey, Virginia and West Virginia connected were fraudulent (see 2212280001).

Defendant Voyager Labs “built a business” on developing surveillance software that improperly relies on fake accounts to scrape data from Facebook and Instagram through “unauthorized, automated means,” said Meta’s opposition Friday (docket 3:23-cv-00154) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco to Voyager’s April 13 motion to dismiss (see 2304140003). Voyager seeks to dismiss Meta’s data-scraping complaint for failure to state a claim on which relief may be granted.

There’s “no realistic prospect” that four U.S. Supreme Court justices would grant Apple cert on the questions it raises in its motion for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to stay the mandate in its decision to affirm the injunction barring Apple from enforcing its anti-steering rules against U.S. iOS app developers (see 2307050021), said Epic Games’ opposition Wednesday (docket 21-16506).

Samsung and Best Buy falsely represented that Samsung’s QLED TVs have qualities, characteristics and functionalities they don’t have, alleged a fraud class action (docket 8:23-cv-01194) Monday in U.S. District Court for Central California in Santa Ana.