The U.S. Supreme Court shouldn’t “overrule” Chevron because it’s “a bedrock principle of administrative law that provides an appropriately tailored framework for judicial review of an agency’s interpretation of a statute it administers,” said U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar in the government’s brief Friday in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (docket 22-451). It's not a view shared among the dozens that filed amicus briefs in the case through July 24 in unequivocal support of eliminating Chevron (see 2307240050).
Factory Mutual Insurance seeks the dismissal of Comcast Spectacor’s COVID-19 insurance complaint for failure to state a claim, while Spectacor seeks a stay of the proceedings until the final resolution of two similar cases on appeal now pending before Pennsylvania Supreme Court, said the nearly simultaneous Factory Mutual and Spectacor motions Thursday (docket 2:23-cv-02476) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
American Tower and its Ulysses subsidiary, plus Verizon and Alltel, removed to U.S. District Court for Northern Indiana in South Bend Thursday an Aug. 16 complaint filed in Elkhart Superior Court in which plaintiff Debra Brown seeks to nullify the wireless communications easement on her residential property in Goshen, Indiana, and to exclude the defendants from the parcel of real estate that’s “burdened” by the easement, said their notice of removal (docket 3:23-cv-00842).
Eight former FTC and DOJ antitrust enforcers from Democratic and Republican administrations asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm the district court's denial of the FTC's motion for a preliminary injunction on Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard buy (see 2307110031). Their brief was one of seven amici briefs filed Wednesday (docket 23-15992), all in opposition to the FTC's merger challenge on appeal.
The social media injunction imposed July 4 by U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty (see 2307050042) and modified, affirmed and vacated in part Sept. 8 by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (see 2309110001) “flouts bedrock principles of Article III, the First Amendment, and equity,” said the solicitor general’s U.S. Supreme Court application Thursday (docket 23A243) for a stay, pending resolution of the government’s forthcoming cert petition challenging the injunction on constitutional grounds.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) looks forward to “fighting for this commonsense law in court,” emailed a spokesperson Monday of AB-587, the state’s social media law, after the X platform, formerly Twitter, sued Friday to block the state from enforcing it (see 2309110004). AB-587 requires social media companies with annual revenues exceeding $100 million to file “terms of service” reports with the California AG, specifying their content moderation policies and practices, with the first report due Jan. 1. AB-587's defenders call it “a pure transparency measure that simply requires companies to be upfront about if and how they are moderating content.” But X’s lawsuit said AB-587 violates the First Amendment and the California Constitution because it compels companies like X “to engage in speech against their will.”
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein for Southern New York in Manhattan approved the stipulation between Comcast Cable and MaxLinear and their attorneys that assures Comcast will be able to continue sourcing MaxLinear chips for its broadband gateways at least through late May, said Hellerstein’s signed order Tuesday (docket 1:23-cv-04436).
The Aug. 9 class action in U.S. District Court for Western Missouri in which plaintiff Michelle Blankenship alleges T-Mobile collected from customers a “city license” or "utility” tax it wasn't authorized to collect (see 2308100031) is “the exact same lawsuit” she filed nearly a year ago in which a state court compelled her claims to arbitration, said T-Mobile’s motion to dismiss Tuesday (docket 4:23-cv-00561).
Congress entrusts the FCC, not the courts, with the authority to decide whether to preempt local ordinances under Section 253 of the Telecommunications Act after notice and the opportunity for comment, said Pasadena, Texas, in a 5th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court petition Monday (docket 22-20454). The city is seeking en banc reconsideration of the panel’s Aug. 4 decision affirming the district court’s ruling in appellee Crown Castle’s favor (see 2308170035).
Rochester, New York, denies the allegations of Crown Castle, Extenet and Verizon that the new telecommunications code the city enacted three years ago imposes excessively high fees on telecom providers in violation of federal law (see 2308010002), said the city’s post-trial memorandum of law Friday (docket 6:19-cv-06583) in U.S. District Court for Western New York in Rochester. Its opposition to the companies’ motion for judgment in their favor followed a two-day consolidated bench trial in early June (see 2212200065).