Four more negligence class actions were filed late last week -- three in U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania in Comcast’s Philadelphia home jurisdiction, and another in a Florida district court -- involving the October data breach at Citrix Systems that allegedly affected as many as 36 million individuals. Last week, two cases were filed in Philadelphia federal court after Comcast began notifying customers Dec. 18 about the breach (see 2312210023).

The government’s U.S. Supreme Court petition to defeat the injunction barring federal officials from coercing social media platforms to moderate their content “raises critical questions about how far the government can go in attempting to influence the actions of private social media companies that are deciding "what speech to disseminate,” said the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in an amicus brief Friday (docket 23-411) in Murthy v. Missouri.

NetChoice is seeking a preliminary injunction blocking Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes (R) from enforcing the Utah Social Media Regulation Act against NetChoice members when the statute takes effect March 1 (see 2312180054), said its Dec. 20 memorandum (docket 2:23-cv-00911) in U.S. District Court for Utah in Salt Lake City.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment against plaintiff-appellants Regie Salgado and Melinda Zambrano, two former employees of TruConnect Communications who alleged that the cellphone network operator fired them in retaliation for raising claims that the company engaged in schemes to defraud the FCC’s Lifeline program, said the 9th Circuit’s memorandum Friday (docket 22-55721).

Communications Litigation Today is tracking the below lawsuits involving appeals of FCC actions. Cases marked with an * were terminated since the last update. Cases in bold are new since the last update.

A lower court’s ruling against the Internet Archive that books loaned via controlled digital lending (CDL) would replace the market for commercially licensed ebooks “was flawed,” said an amici brief Friday (docket 23-cv-1260) filed by nine library organizations and 218 librarians in support of defendant IA in its 2nd Circuit U.S. Court appeal.

For nearly four decades, Chevron deference has provided a stable background rule against which Congress can legislate, said a U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief Thursday in Relentless v. Commerce Department (docket 22-1219) in support of the government’s efforts to preserve Chevron. The brief was filed by two Emory University School of Law student organizations -- the Emory Intellectual Property Society and the Law and Artificial Intelligence Society.

Government “co-option” of the content moderation systems of social media companies “is a serious threat to freedom of speech,” especially for social media users “with no say in whether their speech is silenced,” said the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy & Technology in a U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief Thursday (docket 23-411) in Murthy v. Missouri. The brief is in support of neither the plaintiffs seeking to impose a social media content moderation injunction on federal officials, nor the government seeking to defeat it.

Controlled digital lending “maintains copyright’s balance of interests and does not reduce financial incentives for authors,” wrote the Authors Alliance in a 2nd U.S. Circuit Appeals Court amicus brief Thursday (docket 23-1260) in support of the Internet Archive in its copyright case.

ESO Solutions, a supplier of data management software to hospitals and first responders, waited three months to notify affected individuals about a data breach it learned of Sept. 28, alleged a class action Thursday (docket 1:23-cv-01557) in U.S. District Court for Western Texas in Austin.