Amazon subsidiary Ring agreed to refund customers $5.8 million as part of its settlement with the FTC over privacy lapses involving access to video recordings on Ring cameras. DOJ's complaint Wednesday (docket 1:23-cv-01549), filed on the FTC's behalf in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges Ring violated the FTC Act by allowing thousands of employees and contractors to access video recordings of customers’ "intimate spaces" without customers’ knowledge or consent.

Amazon violated the FTC Act and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) rule by “misrepresenting” that it would delete voice transcripts and geolocation information of Alexa users on request and would limit employees’ access to Alexa users’ voice information, said a stipulated order Wednesday (docket 2:23-cv-00811) in U.S. District Court for Western Washington in Seattle. Amazon also failed to delete children’s personal information at their parents’ request, and it kept children’s personal information “longer than reasonably necessary to fulfill the purpose for which the information was collected,” it said.

Until late last year, Hulu and Disney+ offered video content to Texas residents over the public internet “without state or local government interference,” said the streaming services’ counterclaim Tuesday (docket DC-22-09128) in 14th Judicial District Court in Dallas against the 31 Texas cities seeking to force the services to pay franchise fees for the video programming they provide through wireline facilities in the public rights-of-way (see 2304120051). Netflix also is a defendant in the dispute with the Texas cities but wasn’t party to the Hulu-Disney+ counterclaim.

Verizon is trying to pull the wool over the court’s eyes about the arbitration clause in its customer service agreement when it seeks to compel the dispute of 27 California consumers to arbitration, said the consumers’ opposition brief Friday (docket 3:23-cv-01138) in U.S. District Court for New Jersey in Trenton. Repeated court rulings have attested to “the gross unconscionability and unenforceability” of Verizon’s arbitration provisions, it said.

The U.S. District Court for Western North Carolina in Statesville should reject AT&T’s motion to compel plaintiff Timothy Trimble’s fraud claims to arbitration, said Trimble’s reply brief in opposition Friday (docket 5:23-cv-00038). His class action alleges AT&T “completely and utterly failed” to protect sensitive consumer data when it suffered a “massive data breach” in January, compromising the personal information of about 9 million U.S. customers (see 2305150052).

Four plaintiffs, including current and former Dish Network employees, joined a class action against Dish after a Feb. 23 data breach, said the first amended complaint (docket 1:23-cv-01168) to a May 9 lawsuit in U.S. District Court for Colorado in Denver (see 2305110027). The privacy suit alleges Dish failed to properly secure customers’ and employees’ personally identifiable information (PII) from hackers after a February network outage. The amended complaint also added violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

T-Mobile would upend the 1996 Telecom Act principle of cooperative federalism if courts stopped California from moving to a connections-based USF contribution mechanism, argued the California Public Utilities Commission. In an answering brief Tuesday at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the CPUC also disagreed that a flat-fee surcharge discriminates against federal affordable connectivity program (ACP) participants.

Here are Communications Litigation Today's top stories from last week, in case you missed them. Each can be found by searching on its title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

Florida will lessen limits on telemarketing, potentially reducing the number of class-action lawsuits filed under the Florida Telephone Solicitation Act (FTSA). Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bill (HB-761) Thursday loosening state robocall restrictions the same week he announced a presidential run. The new law is likely to lessen autodialer litigation in a state that briefly had some of the tightest restrictions, said telemarketing lawyers.

Cisco’s interpretation that Dexon “drafted a roadmap for evasion of unfavorable rulings” is an “incorrect reading” of the district court’s orders, said Dexon’s response (docket 23-40257) Friday to Cisco and CDW’s April petition for mandamus relief in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.