It’s vital for state attorneys general to band together in multistate investigations against tech platforms because it’s the only way to get proper relief, AGs from both parties said Wednesday in Washington, citing children’s privacy and antitrust.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit hearing oral argument Tuesday appeared to sympathize in part with Schwab Multimedia’s difficulty in constructing an AM station during the pandemic but also seemed to agree with FCC arguments that COVID-19 didn’t change the agency’s rules around requesting extensions for construction deadlines (docket 22-1016).

AT&T and T-Mobile don't believe “that substantive settlement discussions would be productive” on AT&T’s Sept. 6 complaint alleging T-Mobile’s BannedSeniors.com ad and marketing campaign is rife with falsehoods, in violation of the Lanham Act, said the two sides in a joint rule 26(f) report Tuesday (docket 4:22-cv-00760) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas in Sherman. “As a result, no formal settlement demands or offers have been exchanged,” they said.

Communications Litigation Today is providing readers with the 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.

Comcast and Nexstar are battling over discovery in a year-old retransmission consent case Nexstar v Comcast, which involves Nexstar’s relationship to sidecar broadcaster Mission and WPIX New York, according to filings Friday and Monday in docket 1:21-cv-06860 in the U.S. District Court for Eastern New York.

A federal court should block Meta’s acquisition of Within Unlimited to allow the FTC to adjudicate whether the deal is unlawful in an administrative trial, the agency said Monday in a filing before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (docket 5:22-cv-04325). Meta said in its own filing that it opposes any FTC motion for preliminary injunction, arguing the agency’s competition claim is “fatally speculative,” and the two sides shouldn’t be subject to an administrative proceeding that could take years to resolve and jeopardize the deal.

DirecTV named 10 defendants, plus 10 John Does and 10 “XYZ” companies, in a complaint Tuesday (docket 6:22-cv-00423) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas in Tyler that it said “seeks to terminate” an ongoing “imposter fraud scheme” uncovered after “a months-long investigation.”

Crown Castle seeks a pre-motion conference to devise an “expedited briefing schedule” for its anticipated motion for summary judgment in its nearly year-old Telecommunications Act (TCA) infrastructure complaint against the town of Oyster Bay, New York, the company wrote U.S. District Judge Joan Azrack for Eastern New York in Central Islip Monday (docket 2:21-cv-06305). Crown Castle sued the town in November 2021 alleging TCA statutory violations.

The “insistence” of Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward that the Supreme Court “take the highly unusual step of becoming involved now on an emergency basis” to block the House Jan. 6 select committee’s subpoena for her T-Mobile phone and text records “is deeply flawed,” said the committee in its response Friday to her emergency application for a stay or injunction. The rulings by the U.S. District Court for Arizona and the 9th Circuit U.S. Appeals Court denying Ward’s motions to quash the subpoena “are correct,” plus “there is no legal issue warranting” SCOTUS action, it said.

Pay no mind to an FCC brief observing possible justifications for a challenged California LifeLine rule, the National Lifeline Association said Friday at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The California Public Utilities Commission agreed with the FCC office of general counsel’s August analysis in case 21-15969. FCC precedent supports finding the California rule isn’t preempted, the CPUC said.