Court case

You might not be hearing much from big tech on net neutrality lately. But the likes of Google and Facebook are still invested in the fight behind the scenes. The Internet Association joined a legal battle to overturn the Federal Communications Commission's decision to revoke the Obama-era rules, as did the industry group Incompas, which includes smaller telecommunications companies as well as tech companies including Facebook, Netflix, Microsoft, and Twitter.

[Analysis] The ruling that President Trump violated the constitutional rights of Americans when he blocked some of his Twitter followers after they criticized him politically raises many more questions about the extent of those First Amendment obligations. President Trump cannot legally block his Twitter followers for political reasons, the judge ruled, because that would amount to “viewpoint discrimination” by a government official in a public forum. 

President Donald Trump's decision to block his Twitter followers for their political views is a violation of the First Amendment, a federal judge ruled May 23, saying that President Trump's effort to silence his critics is not permissible under the US Constitution because the digital space in which he engages with constituents is a public forum. The ruling rejects administration arguments that the First Amendment does not apply to President Trump in this case because he was acting as a private individual.

It's been a tough slog for cities and towns that want to build ultra-fast fiber internet networks to benefit residents, businesses and their local economies — so tough, in fact, that virtually none has managed to do it. In May, a ruling by the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority further diminished their odds.  PURA's May 9 decision, which may end up in state court, blocks municipalities from using their legally reserved space on utility poles to build fiber networks that offer broadband internet service to residents and businesses, including through contracts with third-party developers.

[Commentary]  I had been waiting with bated breath for the Supreme Court’s decision in Murphy v. NCAA. On May 14, not only did the Supreme Court strike down the federal law at issue, which had stopped states, counties, and cities from legalizing sports gambling within their borders, but it also appears to have invalidated a broad swath of congressional limitations on state tax authority. (Oh, and it also saved sanctuary cities.) What I, for one, didn’t expect is that it would have such significant implications for state tax law as well. Why might it?

[Press release] May 15 the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in a challenge to the Federal Communications Commission’s new Business Data Services (BDS) regime.

Fox News and its parent company 21st Century Fox said they have reached settlements with 18 former employees of the news channel who had filed lawsuits that included allegations of racial and gender discrimination.

In an attempt to win a government lawsuit over its throttling of unlimited data plans, AT&T will appeal a ruling to the Supreme Court. The Federal Trade Commission sued AT&T in October 2014 in US District Court in Northern California, alleging that AT&T promised unlimited data to wireless customers and then throttled their speeds by as much as 90 percent. In response, AT&T argues that the FTC has no jurisdiction over any aspect of AT&T's business because the FTC lacks authority to regulate common carriers.

In a post-trial brief, AT&T and Time Warner said the government "came nowhere close" to proving the proposed AT&T-Time Warner merger violates antitrust laws. The companies said that the government's case was built on "non-probative competitor complaints, irrelevant slide shows," and a theoretical model of harm that collapsed under the weight of "real-world" evidence, then disintegrated upon first contact with real-world events, testimony, and data." The Justice Department had asserted that without spinoffs of Turner programming networks, the merger would mean substantially less comp

Facebook has failed in a last-ditch attempt to delay a major privacy case’s journey to Europe’s top court. The case in question was brought about by Facebook’s arch-nemesis, the Austrian law student Max Schrems, who has already succeeded in sinking the Safe Harbor agreement that gave U.S. firms a simple way to import the data of people from the European Union. As before, he is concerned that US intelligence programs break Europeans’ privacy rights.