Plaintiffs Feliks Roitman and Yekaterina Shkolnik “strenuously object” to defendant T-Mobile’s assertion that their claims should be in arbitration rather than in U.S. District Court for Eastern New York in Brooklyn, their counsel wrote U.S. District Judge Eric Vitaliano in a letter opposition Friday (docket 1:23-cv-06159) to T-Mobile’s anticipated motion to compel arbitration.

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 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the motion of Pasadena, Texas, to stay the issuance of the mandate in its case against Crown Castle, pending its filing of a cert petition at the U.S. Supreme Court, said an order Friday (docket 22-20454) signed by U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry Smith. The mandate is scheduled for issuance Tuesday.

OpenAI moved the court for a preliminary injunction against Open Artificial Intelligence, Inc., enjoining the company and its officers, employees and agents from any and all development, production, promotion, sale and distribution of products or services that use the name “‘OpenAI,’ or any confusingly similar variant, including ‘Open AI’” said its Friday motion (docket 4:23-cv-03918) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco.

Charter Communications’ lawsuit to prevent Bridger Mahlum, its former director-state government affairs, from going to work for BroadbandMT and spilling Charter’s broadband state funding trade secrets “is baseless and demonstrably false,” said Mahlum’s motion to dismiss Friday (docket 3:23-cv-01106) in U.S. District Court for Connecticut in New Haven.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted the cert petitions of NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association challenging on First Amendment grounds the constitutionality of the Florida (docket 22-227) and Texas (docket 22-555) social media laws, said the court’s order list Friday.

The office of Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody (R) moved to dismiss or alternatively to strike defendant Smartbiz Telecom’s Sept. 7 robocalling counterclaim against the state on multiple grounds, including that it's "redundant" to Smartbiz's previous arguments and adds "nothing new to the case," said its motion Thursday (docket 1:22-cv-23945) in U.S. District Court for Southern Florida in Miami. Smartbiz filed its counterclaim after U.S. District Judge Jose Martinez denied its Jan. 20 motion to dismiss Moody’s complaint, saying the Florida AG’s office clearly has Article III standing to bring its robocalling suit on behalf of its citizens (see 2308240041).

In a nation “where the first cries for liberty and independence came from colonial pamphlets and newspapers,” New York now restricts the printed word “in the name of policing conduct,” said the New Civil Liberties Alliance in an amicus brief Tuesday (docket 23-0356) that urges the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to affirm the district court’s preliminary injunction to block New York Attorney General Letitia James from enforcing Section 394-ccc, the state’s hateful conduct law.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit show cause order Thursday giving the FCC 90 days to complete its 2018 quadrennial review was characterized Friday by NAB as a “big win” in an email to members. But broadcast and public interest attorneys said the agency was likely already on a path to approve the QR in that timeline.

The Republican National Committee’s Aug. 24 motion to dismiss plaintiff Jacob Howard’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action (see 2308250005) “addresses an imaginary complaint” and should be denied, said Howard’s opposition Thursday (docket 2:23-cv-00993) in U.S. District Court for Arizona in Phoenix.