Paul Gluckman

The statute authorizing the federal TikTok ban -- the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act -- is unconstitutional, and it isn’t even “a close case,” four professors’ amicus brief said Thursday (docket 24-1113), urging that the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit reject it.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court was "wrong" when it affirmed a district court’s “sweeping” preliminary injunction that barred dozens of White House officials and four federal agencies from coercing social media platforms to moderate their content, the U.S. Supreme Court said in a 6-3 decision Wednesday in Murthy v. Missouri (docket 23-411).

The FCC, intervenors and amici who benefit from E-rate funding contend that authorizing Wi-Fi on school buses will advance students’ education, but there’s “powerful and growing evidence to doubt that claim,” petitioners Maurine and Matthew Molak said in their 5th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court reply brief Monday (docket 23-60641).

To fulfill its “broad mandate” under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the FCC in the digital discrimination order on review “adopted rules that prohibit practices with unjustified discriminatory effects on access to broadband service,” plus intentional discrimination, the commission’s brief said Tuesday (docket 24-1179) in the 8th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court.

The FCC’s motion that would transfer the consolidated challenges of the commission’s net neutrality order to the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit (see 2406100044) is part of a trend of federal agencies that attempt to use venue-transfer motions “to steer major regulatory challenges out of the regional circuits,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a 6th Circuit amicus brief Friday in opposition (dockets 24-7000, 24-3449, 24-3450, 24-3497, 24-3504, 24-3507, 24-3508, 24-3510, 24-3511, 24-3517, 24-3519, 24-3538). This trend harms litigants and courts as it saddles them with “burdensome threshold litigation” in cases that often already involve “fast-paced litigation over stays and other interim relief,” the chamber said. In addition, the trend harms the regulated public, “impairing its right to hold agencies accountable for unlawful conduct in the jurisdictions where that conduct harms the public.” The FCC’s transfer motion is “especially inappropriate” because it would “undermine” the judicial lottery system, “reintroducing through the back door of transfer motions the forum shopping that Congress sought to eliminate when it established the current system of random selection in 1988,” it said. But the FCC stands firm in its support of the transfer, its reply said Friday. This latest round of “follow-on litigation” involves essentially the same parties, legal landscape, and issues that the D.C. Circuit “has been grappling with” through each successive net neutrality case and order, the FCC said. Should the litigation proceed in the 6th Circuit instead of the D.C. Circuit, the 6th Circuit and the parties “would need to expend considerable resources to walk the same ground already traveled during the previous years of litigation in the D.C. Circuit,” it said.

The federal TikTok ban that takes effect Jan. 19 is “unprecedented” because Congress has never “expressly singled out and shut down a specific speech forum,” said TikTok/ByteDance's opening brief Thursday (docket 24-1113) in the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit challenging the ban’s constitutionality (see 2405070045).

The ISP petitioners’ consolidated motion to stay the FCC’s net neutrality order (see 2406110073) “attempts to replay the same legal challenges they ran unsuccessfully in 2015,” said the commission's opposition Tuesday in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (dockets 24.7000, 24.3449, 24.3450, 24.3497, 24.3504, 24.3507, 24.3508, 24.3510, 24.3511, 24.3517, 24.3519, 24.3538).

Granting the FCC’s motion to transfer the consolidated challenges to the commission’s net neutrality order to the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit would “subvert” Congress’ preference for “dispersed regulatory challenges rather than specialized courts,” CTIA, USTelecom and eight other groups told the 6th Circuit in a joint opposition brief Monday (dockets 24-7000, 24-3449, 24-3450, 24-3497, 24-3507, 24-3508, 24-3510, 24-3511, 24-3517, 24-3519).

Education in 2024 “bears very little resemblance to education in previous decades,” and advances in technology have “transformed the pattern of classwork and homework,” said the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition in a 5th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court amicus brief Tuesday (docket 23-60641). The brief backs the FCC’s Oct. 25 declaratory ruling authorizing E-rate funding for Wi-Fi on school buses (see 2312200040).

The FCC’s Oct. 25 declaratory ruling authorizing E-rate funding for Wi-Fi on school buses (see 2312200040) “is both appropriate and lawful,” the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers and eight other educational groups said in a 5th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court amicus brief Monday (docket 23-60641) in support of the commission's ruling.