The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency “meets interminably” with social media platforms to discuss content-moderation policies and censorship, said the Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri, plus five individual social media user plaintiffs, in a respondents’ brief Tuesday (docket 23A243) at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The plaintiffs who seek to hold Apple liable for the fraud involving Toast Plus, a third-party app on the App Store, can’t “circumvent” Section 230’s protections through creative pleading, said a amicus brief filed Tuesday in the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals (docket 22-16514) by NetChoice, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Software & Information Industry Association in support of Apple’s request to affirm the district court’s dismissal of the case. The Chamber of Progress and ACT | The App Association also signed onto the brief.

Best Buy’s arbitration agreement is “unconscionable” and “unenforceable,” said plaintiff Sergio Rodriguez, opposing (docket 8:23-cv-01194) the retailer’s motion to compel arbitration in a fraud class action in U.S. District Court for Central California in Santa Ana. Rodriguez’s July fraud lawsuit against Best Buy and Samsung alleges the Samsung QLED 4K TV he bought in 2022 didn’t have the Xcelerator Turbo+, FreeSync and HDMI 2.1 features that were advertised.

U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell for Western North Carolina in Statesville should deny InvestorPlace Media’s Sept. 27 motion to dismiss plaintiff Courtney Hill’s first amended Telephone Consumer Protection Act complaint because the text messages it sent Hill for months were profit-driven and meant to drive traffic to its website where it solicits the sale of its services, said Hill’s opposition Tuesday (docket 5:23-cv-00111).

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “latest bid to dictate the content moderation policies of a private entity" seeks the "remarkable relief" of preliminarily enjoining Google from exercising its discretion to remove videos conveying "dangerous COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation” on its YouTube platform, said Google’s opposition Monday (docket 3:23-cv-03880) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco to Kennedy’s Sept. 25 motion for an injunction.

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.

The attorneys general of 48 states and the District of Columbia “pursued a public smear campaign” on robocalling allegations against VoIP provider Avid Telecom, its CEO Michael Lansky and its Vice President Stacey Reeves, despite the FCC or the FTC never having said a single call transmitted by the defendants was illegal, said the defendants’ motion to dismiss Friday (docket 4:23-cv-00233) in U.S. District Court for Arizona in Tucson. They also alternatively filed a motion to stay the proceedings and refer the allegations to the FCC and FTC, to the extent that the court declines to dismiss the complaint in its entirety.

Indiana’s HB-1186 statute, which took effect July 1 after being enacted April 20, “unconstitutionally abridges” the news media’s ability to fulfill its functions by making it a misdemeanor for journalists to come within 25 feet of police officers who are lawfully engaged in the execution of their official duties, alleged Nexstar, Scripps, Tegna and the Indianapolis Star in a First Amendment complaint Friday (docket 1:23-cv-01805) in U.S. District Court for Southern Indiana in Indianapolis.

Rochester, New York's Sept. 8 opposition, denying the allegations of plaintiffs Crown Castle, Extenet and Verizon that the city imposes excessively high fees on telecom providers in violation of federal law (see 2309110005|), rests its entire case on a misinterpretation of the FCC’s September 2018 “barriers” order, said the plaintiffs’ reply Friday (docket 6:19-cv-06583) in U.S. District Court for Western New York in Rochester.

Facebook and Twitter violated boxer and political activist Cara Castronuova’s free speech rights, said her Thursday First Amendment lawsuit (1:23-cv-07511) against Meta and Twitter, now X Corp., filed Saturday in U.S. District Court for Eastern New York in Brooklyn. The complaint also names President Joe Biden and U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.