DOJ, in an emergency motion Monday, asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for a partial stay of the social media preliminary injunction entered July 4 by the U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, to the extent that Doughty’s injunction is now “inconsistent” with the 5th Circuit’s Friday ruling, pending the issuance of the 5th Circuit’s mandate. The government, in the alternative, asked the 5th Circuit to issue its mandate immediately, said the emergency motion. The mandate without the court’s intervention isn’t scheduled to issue until Oct. 31, it said.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty for Western Louisiana didn’t err in determining that officials from the White House, the Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI “likely coerced or significantly encouraged social-media platforms to moderate content, rendering those decisions state actions,” in potential violation of the First Amendment, said the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a late-Friday opinion (docket 23-30445).

The U.S. District Court for Western Arkansas in Fayetteville, in a late-Thursday opinion and order, granted NetChoice’s motion for a preliminary injunction blocking Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin (R) from enforcing SB-396, the state’s social media age verification law, when it takes effect Friday.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld a 2022 FCC decision revoking Pacific Networks’ and its subsidiary ComNet’s authority to offer domestic or international services in the U.S. The FCC “revoked these authorizations based on concerns that the carriers posed national-security risks and had proven themselves untrustworthy,” said a decision written by Judge Gregory Katsas, in docket 22-1054. “The carriers argue that the FCC’s reasoning was substantively arbitrary and was rendered with inadequate process,” he said: “We reject both contentions.”

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, in a text-only docket entry Wednesday (docket 23A78), denied Epic Games’ emergency July 25 application to vacate the stay of the appellate mandate issued by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. 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 doing business in the App Store. Kagan is Supreme Court justice for the 9th Circuit.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a late-Friday decision (docket 22-20454), affirmed the district court’s granting of summary judgment for Crown Castle against the city of Pasadena, Texas, and imposing a permanent injunction prohibiting the city’s use of its design manual to prevent Crown Castle’s installation of a small cell, distributed antenna systems network.

T-Mobile’s MetroPCS prevailed against the California Public Utilities Commission in a dispute about USF surcharges at the U.S. District Court for Northern California (case 3:17-cv-05959-JD).

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a Friday order, denied the FTC’s emergency motion for a “temporary pause” in the consummation of Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard buy. Its denial permitted the district court’s temporary restraining order that had enjoined the merger from being consummated to expire at 11:59 p.m. PDT Friday night.

Action is needed by 11:59 p.m. PDT Friday night on the FTC’s emergency motion before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for an injunction pending appeal blocking Microsoft from consummating its Activision Blizzard buy, said the agency’s motion late Thursday evening (docket 23-15992). Without 9th Circuit action on the emergency motion, Microsoft/Activision may close their deal anytime after 11:59 p.m. PDT Friday when the district court’s modified temporary restraining order expires, said the FTC.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted DOJ a temporary administrative stay of the preliminary injunction imposed July 4 by U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty for Western Louisiana in Monroe to prevent dozens of Biden administration officials from conversing with social media platforms for the purposes of content moderation, said the court’s Friday afternoon order (docket 23-30445).