Hikvision, Dahua and the U.S. government made final arguments on whether the FCC wrongly barred gear from the Chinese companies from being authorized under the agency’s equipment authorization program and wrongly placed the companies on the FCC’s “covered list.” The pleadings were filed Wednesday at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C Circuit (docket 23-1032). Oral argument hasn’t been scheduled in the case.

Defendants WCO Spectrum, founder Gary Winnick and CEO Carl Katerndahl seek the dismissal of T-Mobile’s fraud complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, said their memorandum Monday (docket 2:23-cv-04347) in U.S. District Court for Central California in support of their motion to dismiss.

The court should dismiss a fraud class action arising from a 2022 LastPass data breach because the plaintiffs lack standing and failed to plead facts sufficient to constitute plausible claims under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), said defendants GoTo Technologies and LastPass in their motion to dismiss Monday (docket 1:22-cv-12047) Monday in U.S. District Court for Massachusetts. The defendants also requested oral argument.

The FTC added three Amazon executives and included “significant new details” in an amended complaint Wednesday (docket 2:23-cv-00932) in U.S. District Court for Western Washington in Seattle. The details were redacted in its original June complaint.

The narrow targeting of Maryland’s so-called tax on digital ad revenue may suggest it’s primarily a punishment that federal courts are permitted to review under the U.S. Tax Injunction Act (TIA), 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Julius Richardson said at oral argument Wednesday. The 4th Circuit is reviewing an appeal by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce of the March 2022 decision by the U.S. District Court in Baltimore to dismiss the Chamber’s challenge of the tax, plus the district court’s December dismissal of the Chamber’s challenge to the tax’s pass-through ban (case 22-2275). The 4th Circuit should remand all counts back to district court, argued the Chamber’s attorney Michael Kimberly of McDermott Will.

Though litigants “exaggerate,” it may “actually be true that the fate of the freedom of speech in America depends” on what the U.S. Supreme Court does with the preliminary injunction barring federal officials from coercing social media platforms to moderate their content, said the Children’s Health Defense and its founder, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. They filed an amicus brief Wednesday (docket 23A243) in opposition to the government’s application for a full stay of the injunction pending the disposition of its appeal (see 2309140041).

The FCC rightly put Hikvision and Dahua video equipment on its “covered list” of network gear deemed to pose a threat to U.S. security, Motorola Solutions said in a brief filed Tuesday at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C Circuit (docket 23-1032). The Chinese companies are challenging the classification (see 2308310001) in the FCC’s Nov. 25 order barring authorization of network equipment on the covered list (see 2304250043).

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Meta intercepted individuals’ personal health data from their “covered entities” and via the Meta Pixel tracking tool profited from it without their consent, said a fraud class action Monday (docket 4:23-cv-04784) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in Oakland.

Montana’s statewide TikTok ban, SB-419, “is appropriately protecting its citizens’ privacy from TikTok and its troubling relationship with China,” said the Republican attorneys general of Virginia and 17 other states in an amici brief Monday (docket 9:23-cv-00061) in U.S. District Court for Montana in Missoula. The AGs oppose the plaintiffs’ consolidated motions for a preliminary injunction to block Montana AG Austin Knudsen (R) from enforcing SB-419 when it takes effect Jan. 1 (see 2309050003).