DOJ attorneys convinced a three-judge 5th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court panel, all Republicans, that U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty’s July 4 injunction was overbroad and vague when it barred dozens of Biden administration officials from pressuring social media platforms to moderate unfavorable content. But the panel’s opinion late Friday (docket 23-30445), paring down the injunction and vacating it outright against officials from three federal agencies, left intact the restrictions on the White House, the Office of the Surgeon General, the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Google moved the court Thursday to compel third-party Havas Media Group to comply with its two "identical subpoenas" to provide documents for antitrust lawsuits about its digital advertising business, said the filing (docket 3:23-mc-03007) in U.S. District Court for Central Illinois in Springfield. The ad agency doesn't consent to the motion, which Google issued as part of its effort to defend against “multiple antitrust lawsuits,” Google said.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick for Northern California in San Francisco denied Meta’s motion to dismiss claims it violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) and of breach of contract and unjust enrichment, and he granted the motion with leave to amend other claims in the John Doe v. Meta privacy class action, said his Thursday order (docket 3:22-cv-03580).

Plaintiff Bruce Bailey anticipates the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation will rule “sometime in October” on his motion to transfer all related actions involving the Progress Software Corp. (PSC) May data breach to U.S. District Court for Minnesota, said his Wednesday status report (docket 3083) before the JPML. Bailey’s July motion to transfer said PSC bears responsibility for a late May data breach in which data of over 15 million people was stolen as part of a security breach by Russian ransomware group CL0P.

The FTC finalized an order with 1Health.io that settles allegations the genetic testing firm left consumers’ sensitive genetic and health data unsecured, deceived customers’ about their ability to get data deleted and changed its privacy policy “retroactively without adequately notifying consumers and obtaining their consent,” said the FTC in a Thursday news release.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a district court’s ruling dismissing a chiropractic office’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act complaint and remanded the case for further proceedings, in a Wednesday decision (docket 22-1279).

The amended breach of contract complaint from EDN Global and CEO Jerome Edmondson against AT&T and three of its employees fails for three reasons, said AT&T’s reply Tuesday (docket 3:23-cv-00355) in support of its motion to dismiss the complaint with prejudice for failure to state a claim.

Verizon agreed to pay a $4.09 million civil penalty, including $2.73 million in restitution, to resolve allegations under the False Claims Act that Verizon Business Network Services failed to completely satisfy certain cybersecurity controls in connection with the Managed Trusted Internet Protocol Service (MTIPS) it provided to federal agencies, said DOJ Tuesday.

Amazon sued Kamryn Russell and other entities operating Amazon selling accounts for facilitating the sale of counterfeit luxury fashion goods, said its Wednesday complaint (docket 2:23-cv-01375) in U.S. District Court for Western Washington in Seattle.

Microsoft’s proposed Activision Blizzard buy involves a “vertical merger” of the sort that the U.S. antitrust agencies “have rarely sought to enjoin” and have lost “every recent case in which they tried.” So said the Microsoft-Activision 9th Circuit answering brief Wednesday (docket 23-15992) in the FTC’s appeal of U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley’s denial of its preliminary injunction to block the transaction from going through (see 2307110061).