U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty’s July 4 injunction barring dozens of Biden administration officials from conversing with social media companies about content moderation is an “unconstitutional prior restraint” on the rights of organizations to speak “freely and petition the government for a redress of grievances,” said an amicus brief Friday (docket 23-30445). Filed at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in support of the government’s efforts to vacate the injunction, the brief was submitted by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law and Common Cause.

The July 4 injunction barring dozens of Biden administration officials from conversing with social media platforms about content moderation (see 2307050042) was “erroneous,” said an amicus brief Friday (docket 23-30445) in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals from the Democratic attorneys generation of 20 states, plus the District of Columbia, in support of DOJ’s appeal to reverse the injunction. “In purporting to protect First Amendment values,” U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty for Western Louisiana in Monroe, a President Donald Trump appointee, “significantly restricted the flow of public discourse on vitally important issues,” said the AGs.

Verizon was “grossly reckless and negligent” in allowing a third-party criminal to access plaintiff Christopher Ayeni’s cellphone and steal more than $215,000 from his bank accounts, alleged Ayeni's complaint (docket 2:23-cv-00618), removed July 24 by defendants Verizon and Bank of America to U.S. District Court for New Mexico in Las Cruces from the 5th Judicial District Court, Eddy County, New Mexico. Verizon “failed to follow reasonable procedures” to prevent criminals from hacking Ayeni’s device and account data “when criminals apparently visited a Verizon location and sought to ‘hack’ into” his account and phone, said the complaint.

The U.S. District Court for Eastern New York should remand a negligence lawsuit to Suffolk County Supreme Court, recommended U.S. Magistrate Judge James Wicks in a Thursday report (docket 2:23-cv-02786), submitted as supplemental information by the Social Media Victims Law Center before the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation.

Amazon removed a seller breach of contract case (docket 1:23-cv-06549) from New York Supreme Court to the U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan Thursday, saying China-based Shenzhen Xingchen Xuanyuan Industrial’s verified complaint is subject to an arbitration agreement.

The U.S. Supreme Court docketed Epic Games’ July 25 emergency application (docket 23A78) asking Justice Elena Kagan to vacate the stay of the appellate mandate issued by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, or in the alternative, to vacate the court’s stay pending appeal. The stay is preventing enforcement of the injunction that Epic won in the district court to enjoin Apple from imposing its anti-steering rules against mobile app developers. Kagan is Supreme Court justice for the 9th circuit.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unanimously upheld Friday the Copyright Royalty Board’s ruling on rates for webcast music for 2021-2025, rejecting appeals from NAB, the National Religious Broadcasters Noncommercial Music License Committee and SoundExchange.

Governments throughout the U.S. have designated certain areas that aren’t “appropriate for minors to occupy,” said Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin (R) in his opposition Thursday in U.S. District Court for Western Arkansas in Fayetteville to NetChoice’s July 7 motion for a preliminary injunction to enjoin him from enforcing the state’s social media age verification law when it takes effect Sept. 1 (see 2307100005).

The Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the cyber policy center headquartered at Stanford University in California, was a founding member of the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) and the Virality Project (VP), groups that improperly figured prominently in U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty’s July 4 injunction barring dozens of Biden administration officials from conversing with social-media companies about content moderation. So said the university, SIO Director Alex Stamos and Renee DiResta, SIO’s research director, in their amicus brief Friday (docket 23-30445) at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in support of the government’s appeal to defeat the injunction.

“Spyware” from software monitoring company Dynatrace “wiretaps” electronic communications of “thousands” of website visitors, secretly observing and recording their “keystrokes, mouse clicks, data entry, and other electronic communications, in real time,” alleged a class action Wednesday (docket 1:23-cv-11673) in U.S. District Court for Massachusetts in Boston.