Court case

The Federal Trade Commission is asking a federal appellate court to reject advertising and business organizations' challenge to click-to-cancel rules that aim to let consumers easily terminate recurring subscriptions to newspapers, gyms, and other businesses. The agency's filing comes in response to a lawsuit brought by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Michigan Press Association, NCTA -- The Internet & Television Association, Chamber of Commerce and other business groups that are seeking to invalidate the rules.

Federal law seeks to make communications technology like telephones and the internet, in the words of one older statute, “available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States.” A longstanding federal program that seeks to implement this goal is now before the Supreme Court, in a case known as FCC v. Consumers’ Research, and the stakes could be enormous.

Over 30 organizations have signed a letter urging US senators to vote against a resolution that would overturn a Federal Communications Commission decision to allow E-Rate funding to be used for Wi-Fi hotspots for students, school staff and library patrons.

CBS has asked the Federal Communications Commission to end its investigation into edits of its “60 Minutes” Kamala Harris interview, arguing that the federal government risks becoming “a roving censor” trampling on free speech rights.President Trump was furious over October 2024's “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Harris in the closing weeks of the campaign. The president and other conservatives chided CBS after it was revealed that “60 Minutes” producers had edited Harris’ jumbled response to a question about the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

The Supreme Court has once again rejected a telecommunications industry challenge to New York's $15 broadband law. The court first refused the hear the case in December, which meant that an appeals court ruling upholding the law was not disturbed.

The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) will hear oral arguments on March 26 in the case of FCC v. Consumers’ Research regarding the constitutionality of the Universal Service Fund (USF). The Court will be reviewing a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that said that the USF is unconstitutional. That ruling conflicted with rulings from two other appeal courts that largely blessed the Federal Communications Commission and USF. The case that drove this to the Supreme Court was filed by Consumers’ Research, a nonprofit activist group.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult for administrative agencies like the Federal Communications Commission to undertake substantial new initiatives, since doing so inevitably results in multi-year court cases that are increasingly ruling against the agency. We saw this in 2024 in the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which has been widely interpreted to mean an end to the Chevron deference.

Elon Musk’s X has agreed to pay about $10 million to settle a lawsuit that President Donald Trump brought against the company and its former chief executive. The agreement makes X the second social-media platform to settle litigation that Trump filed when the companies deplatformed him over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

The U.S. Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments in the case of FCC v. Consumers’ Research—a case regarding the Universal Service Fund—for Wednesday morning, March 26. The court will decide on a 2024 ruling by the U.S.

Meta Platforms has agreed to pay roughly $25 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit that President Trump brought against the company and its CEO after the social-media platform suspended his accounts following the attacks on the U.S. Capitol that year. Of that, $22 million will go toward a fund for Trump’s presidential library, with the rest going to legal fees and the other plaintiffs who signed onto the case. Meta won’t admit wrongdoing.