If Montana’s statewide TikTok ban, SB-419, were to go into effect, it would shut down “a unique and popular platform for speech” used by “several hundred thousand” Montanans, said TikTok’s answering brief Monday (docket 24-34) in the 9th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court. Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen’s (R) appeal seeks to vacate the district court injunction that blocks him from enforcing SB-419 (see 2403020001).

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.

Four complaints filed Friday allege plaintiffs’ car insurance rates increased as a result of General Motor’s OnStar connected car technology sharing information with LexisNexis, which sold GM customers’ driving behavior data to car insurance companies without their knowledge or consent. Two also named Verisk Analytics as a defendant that buys GM’s data.

Three illustrators and a photographer sued Google Friday, alleging its Imagen AI text-to-image diffusion model used a dataset for training that contains their copyrighted works, said the Friday class action (docket 3:24-cv-02531) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco.

IT and cybersecurity firm ReachOut is suing former RedGear principals Luciano Aguayo and Armando Gonzalez over “misconduct” following its October purchase of the IT services company, said a fraud complaint (docket 1:24-cv-03408) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Illinois in Chicago. The plaintiff seeks compensation for past frauds and to stop Aguayo’s “ongoing misappropriation” of ReachOut funds, it said.

The League of Women Voters seeks a preliminary injunction barring defendants Steve Kramer, broadband provider Lingo Telecom and robocall broadcaster Life Corp. from producing, generating or distributing AI-generated robocalls impersonating any person, without that person’s express, prior written consent, said its motion Friday (docket 1:24-cv-00073) in U.S. District Court for New Hampshire in Concord.

The Republican National Committee relies on its “tortured reading” of the 9th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court’s 2023 opinion in Trim v. Reward Zone to “rewrite” the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and “overturn” 15 years of 9th Circuit precedent, said plaintiff-appellant Jacob Howard’s reply brief Friday (docket 23-3826) in support of his appeal to reverse the dismissal of his TCPA case (see 2402080021).

The U.S. Supreme Court “has long recognized the key role private litigants play in enforcing federal antitrust laws,” said the Committee to Support the Antitrust Laws in an amicus brief Thursday (docket 24-8013) in the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta for the District of Columbia, in a ruling Wednesday (docket 1:20-cv-03010), granted in part and denied in part the New York Times' Jan. 19 motion to unseal more than two dozen trial exhibits introduced as evidence in September’s bench trial in the case brought by DOJ and the attorneys general of 48 states (see 2309120075).

Despite advertising that consumers can “pay any bill” using its “purportedly vast payment ‘network of billers,’” third-party bill payment platform Doxo “has no relationship with the overwhelming majority of billers in its supposed ‘network,'” the FTC alleged in a Thursday complaint (docket 2:24-cv-00569) in U.S. District Court for Western Washington in Seattle. The lawsuit names Doxo, CEO Steve Shivers and Vice President Roger Parks.