DOJ asked the U.S. Court of International Trade, in a motion Monday on behalf of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, for permission to correct the administrative record in the Section 301 litigation to include 136 pages of documents not previously submitted in the cases. Virtually all the documents previously were in the public domain, and they include mostly news releases and Federal Register notices announcing USTR actions connected with the imposition of the four rounds of Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports dating to 2018. USTR “was aware of the facts contained in all these documents, such that those facts were considered when making the challenged decisions” about imposing the Lists 3 and 4A tariffs, said the agency: “Upon drafting the remand results as ordered by the Court, the USTR has determined that additional documents either were indirectly considered in the process of issuing the contested determinations, or they were issued in conjunction with the contested determinations, such that they should be part of the administrative record.” The remand results themselves, to address what the court in April found to be Administrative Procedure Act violations at USTR in the deficient way in which it imposed the Lists 3 and 4A tariffs, were due at the court by the close of business Aug. 1. The DOJ said it reached out Thursday to Matthew Nicely and Pratik Shah, lead Akin Gump attorneys for test-case plaintiffs HMTX Industries and Jasco Products, to gauge their position on the motion. According to the DOJ, Nicely and Shah said they “take no position on the motion, on the understanding that the Government has forfeited reliance on documents not cited in its previous merits briefing to this Court.” Nicely didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Ohio will lead a class-action lawsuit against Facebook claiming the platform “misled” users about how a “proprietary algorithm promoted offensive and dangerous content to users,” a federal judge decided Wednesday. "This case is about lies and losses -- Facebook's lies, and the losses incurred by our pension systems and others," said Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (R), concerning the filing before the U.S. District Court in Northern California. "Ohio is happy and determined to lead in enforcing accountability against Facebook." Ohio will be joint lead plaintiff with PFA Pension of Denmark. Between April and October 2021, the company and senior executives “violated federal securities laws by purposely misleading the public about the negative effects its products have on the health and well-being of children,” Yost’s office said. “Those misrepresentations boosted the price of Facebook stock, harming investors.” Yost represents the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System. “Ohio PERS and PFA Pension are the presumptive lead plaintiff by virtue of having the largest financial interest,” Judge Jon Tigar wrote in his ruling. Yost claims that testimony from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen caused the company’s stock to plummet, resulting in about $3 million losses for the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System. The company didn’t comment.

Maryland and U.S. Chamber of Commerce supplemental briefs are due Aug. 12 on the constitutionality of a pass-through prohibition in the state’s digital ad tax law, U.S. District Court in Baltimore Judge Lydia Griggsby said Monday in case 1:21-cv-00410-LKG. Responses are due Aug. 26, said the order. Griggsby at oral argument earlier this month said the ban implicates speech (see 2207120077). Maryland’s Anne Arundel Circuit Court scheduled an Oct. 17 hearing on a parallel state court complaint by Comcast and Verizon (case C-02-CV-21-000509]).

Amazon filed legal action in King County Superior Court in Seattle against the administrators of over 10,000 Facebook groups that it says attempt to orchestrate fake reviews on Amazon in exchange for money or free products, the company said Tuesday, citing car stereos and camera tripods as examples. One of the groups identified in the lawsuit is Amazon Product Review, which Amazon claimed had more than 43,000 members until Meta took down the group this year. The groups are allegedly set up to recruit individuals willing to post “incentivized and misleading reviews” on Amazon e-commerce sites in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan, the company said. Amazon will use information discovered in the legal action to identify bad actors and remove fake reviews commissioned by the fraudsters that haven’t been detected by its technology, investigators and monitoring, it said. “Our teams stop millions of suspicious reviews before they’re ever seen by customers, and this lawsuit goes a step further to uncover perpetrators operating on social media,” said Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon vice president-selling partner services. Amazon’s investigations showed the group’s administrators attempted to hide their activity and evade Facebook’s detection, in part by “obfuscating letters from problematic phrases.” Amazon “strictly prohibits fake reviews and has more than 12,000 employees around the world dedicated to protecting its stores from fraud and abuse," the company said. A dedicated team investigates fake reviews on social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter, and regularly reports abusive groups to those companies, it said. Of the more than 10,000 fake review groups Amazon has reported to Meta since 2020, Meta has taken down more than half of the groups for policy violations and continues to investigate others, Amazon said. It called fake reviews an “industry-wide problem,” saying civil litigation “is only one step.” Amazon advocated public-private collaboration among affected companies, social media sites and law enforcement focused on greater consumer protection.

U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga in Alexandria, Virginia, ordered the freezing of accounts of virtual private network (VPN) operator VeePN, in a temporary restraining order Thursday (docket 1:22-cv-741). The TRO was sought by movie production companies suing various alleged pirates and data center DataCamp, to which the alleged pirates subscribe, said the order. The content companies say VeePN is also a DataCamp subscriber and a distributor of the Popcorn Time video piracy app. Trenga ordered Panama's VeePN cease marketing itself as a Popcorn Time VPN or using the Popcorn Time app on its websites. VeePN didn't comment Friday.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Thursday sued the FTC in an effort to gain access to Freedom of Information Act documents it says the agency “unlawfully” withheld (see 2112030042). The FTC circumvented due process, concentrated power in the hands of Chair Lina Khan and used “dubious legal means to achieve pre-ordained ends,” Chamber CEO Suzanne Clark said in a statement. The Chamber is seeking access to documents on so-called “zombie votes,” which the commission counted after Commissioner Rohit Chopra left the agency. The Chamber requested communication between the FTC, the European Commission and other foreign bodies about the Illumina-Grail transaction. The FTC “may have collaborated with and relied upon a foreign government authority to strong-arm American corporations into abandoning a planned merger,” the Chamber said. It requested details of Khan’s “legal fellow” employment status under Chopra. “The position of ‘legal fellow’ is highly unusual and not a typical title used in relationship to staff positions in support of a commissioner,” the Chamber said. The lawsuit was filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The agency didn’t comment.

A jury trial is scheduled to start Aug. 1 on record labels' claims of Charter Communications' Bright House Networks not doing enough to combat music piracy by its broadband subscribers (see 2108120002), per a docket 8:19-cv-710 order Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Tampa.

Louisiana and Missouri can proceed with collecting discovery documents in a freedom of speech case involving top Biden administration officials and social media companies, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana ruled Tuesday (see 2207070058). The states sued the Biden administration in May claiming officials colluded with social media companies to censor and suppress truthful information on topics like COVID-19, the efficacy of masks and election integrity. Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (R) called the grant of discovery a “huge development.” The order noted the “First Amendment obviously applies to the citizens of Missouri and Louisiana, so Missouri and Louisiana have the authority to assert those rights.”

Oral argument will be Sept. 19 in San Francisco in the Reno, Nevada, appeal of a lower court's rejection of the city's suit seeking franchise fees from Hulu and Netflix (see 2202080088), the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a docket notation filed Sunday (docket 21-16560).

A South Carolina data scraping case could get a trial on or after May 8, Judge Mary Lewis said in a Monday scheduling order at the U.S. District Court in Columbia. The NAACP and American Civil Liberties Union sued the South Carolina State Court Administration in March for banning automated data collection (see 2203300049). Discovery must be done by Jan. 4 and the deadline for mediation is March 20, ruled Lewis in case 3:2022-cv-01007. The state court defendants moved to dismiss the case. The federal court should abstain “because this case implicates decisions for which the common law and the state constitution have entrusted authority to” South Carolina’s judicial branch, they said Friday. “Plaintiff has no right to access data in the Judicial Branch’s control,” the defendants said. “The First Amendment requires no right of access,” but even if that right exists, “it is not unlimited and does not extend to the particular type of access sought by Plaintiff,” the state courts said. “Any minor hurdle to one particular user posed by the prohibition on scraping does not offend the First Amendment.”