Browse Cases

PENSKE MEDIA CORPORATION v. GOOGLE LLC

Issue: Whether Google's conditioning of search indexing and SERP placement on publishers' involuntary supply of content for AI Overviews, Featured Snippets, and LLM training constitutes unlawful reciprocal dealing, monopoly maintenance, and unlawful tying in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1–2.

Why It Matters: This complaint directly tests whether antitrust law — rather than copyright or Section 230 — can constrain a dominant platform's use of third-party content to power generative AI products, potentially establishing that coerced content licensing through monopoly search distribution is actionable under the Sherman Act and setting a framework for evaluating AI training and inference as anticompetitive leveraging conduct.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. v. Perplexity AI, Inc.

Issue: Whether Perplexity AI's automated answer engine, which generates verbatim or near-verbatim reproductions of copyrighted content in response to user-directed queries, constitutes "volitional conduct" by Perplexity sufficient to support direct copyright infringement liability under 17 U.S.C. § 106, as governed by the Second Circuit's *Cablevision* volitional-conduct doctrine.

Why It Matters: This motion squarely presents to a federal court the question of whether the *Cablevision* volitional-conduct doctrine—developed in the context of automated cable DVR systems—extends to shield generative AI answer engines from direct copyright infringement liability when their outputs reproduce third-party copyrighted material at a user's explicit direction. The court's ruling could establish a significant precedent governing the allocation of direct infringement liability between AI platform operators and their users across the rapidly expanding universe of RAG-based generative AI products.

Doe v. Discord, Inc.

Issue: Doe v. Discord, Inc.* asks whether 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1) immunizes a social media platform from state-law claims arising from the sexual exploitation of a minor user, when the plaintiff frames those claims not merely as failures to moderate content but as independent product-design defects, failure-to-warn violations, and misrepresentations about platform safety. The question is sharpened by the plaintiff's deliberate pleading strategy of recasting monitoring-and-blocking duties under product-liability and tort labels — an approach that has survived § 230 challenges in some courts — and by Discord's specific marketing representations about user safety directed at minors and their families.

Why It Matters: This ruling reinforces § 230's breadth in the Sixth Circuit by applying the *Jones* framework with particular rigor to a child-safety fact pattern, directly rejecting the product-liability recharacterization strategy that plaintiffs in platform-harm litigation have increasingly deployed to escape immunity. The decision supplies the Northern District of Ohio's most detailed analysis of the *Barnes* promissory-estoppel exception, drawing an explicit line between aspirational corporate safety messaging — which cannot anchor a surviving misrepresentation claim — and specific, individualized promises that could. It also creates a meaningful doctrinal gap with the Ninth Circuit's *Lemmon v. Snap* line, which permits negligent-design claims to proceed when a platform feature is treated as the defendant's own expressive conduct rather than third-party content moderation, a tension the Sixth Circuit has not yet resolved. The with-prejudice dismissal signals that courts applying *Jones* are unlikely to permit iterative re-pleading aimed at constructing a § 230-surviving theory after the gravamen of the complaint targets moderation.

Glass, Lewis & Co., LLC v. Paxton

Issue: Whether the preliminary injunction enjoining the Texas Attorney General from "taking any action to enforce S.B. 2337" against Glass Lewis also bars enforcement of a Civil Investigative Demand issued under § 17.61 of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Act, a separate pre-existing consumer-protection statute.

Why It Matters: The motion tests the boundary between a targeted First Amendment injunction against a specific statute and a government agency's parallel investigative authority under a separate, long-standing consumer-protection law, with implications for how narrowly courts will construe injunctions restraining state enforcement actions against speakers such as proxy advisors.

NetChoice v. Ellison

Issue: Whether Minnesota's proposed statutory restrictions on social media platform design features — including algorithmic amplification, engagement-based optimization, and "deceptive patterns" targeting minors — violate the First Amendment's prohibitions on compelled speech and forced hosting of third-party content.

Why It Matters: The report is significant as an exhibit because it reveals the state's own regulatory theory — that platform liability should attach to *design functions* rather than *content* — a distinction the AG explicitly frames as the constitutionally safer path in light of prior court decisions striking down content-based online speech laws, and which NetChoice is apparently contesting as insufficient to avoid First Amendment scrutiny.

Media Matters for America v. Warren Paxton, Jr.

Issue: Whether the Texas Attorney General's investigation and civil investigative demand targeting Media Matters for America violated the First Amendment by constituting retaliatory government action in response to the organization's critical reporting about X (Twitter) and Elon Musk.

Why It Matters: This case directly applies Bantam Books and Backpage.com v. Dart jawboning doctrine to state attorney general investigations of media organizations covering technology platforms. It establishes that investigative demands issued in apparent retaliation for critical reporting about politically connected platform owners constitute actionable First Amendment violations, extending constitutional constraints on government use of regulatory process to chill platform-related journalism and reinforcing limits on government-platform coordination to suppress critical speech.

Little v. Llano County

Issue: Insufficient text to determine. (This document is a New York state criminal appeal concerning a guilty plea, waiver of appeal rights, and suppression hearing forfeiture — it bears no relationship to the labeled case *Little v. Llano County* or to First Amendment law, Section 230, or AI/ML civil liability.)

Why It Matters: Insufficient text to determine. This decision addresses New York criminal procedure — specifically the validity of appeal waivers and suppression hearing forfeiture rules — and contains no analysis relevant to platform liability, First Amendment doctrine as applied to technology or public institutions, Section 230, or AI/ML regulation.

Yelp Inc. v. Paxton

Angelilli v. Activision Blizzard, Inc., 2025 WL 1181000

Issue: Whether § 230 bars claims that Activision's online gaming platform facilitated harassment and harmful conduct directed at plaintiff through features of its Call of Duty game and matchmaking system.

Why It Matters: Part of the emerging litigation testing the scope of § 230 in the online gaming context, where platform design choices about matchmaking, anonymity, and in-game communication systems intersect with severe harassment. Related to the companion decision in the same matter, 2025 WL 1184247.

Angelilli v. Activision Blizzard, Inc., 2025 WL 1184247

Issue: Whether § 230 bars related claims arising from Activision's alleged failure to implement effective anti-harassment systems and safety features in the Call of Duty online platform, following the companion decision in 2025 WL 1181000.

Why It Matters: Companion to 2025 WL 1181000, together comprising the district court's full § 230 analysis of platform liability in the online gaming context. The pair of decisions addresses a relatively underexplored area of § 230 doctrine — the application of the statute to gaming platforms — and may be influential in subsequent litigation involving harassment on online multiplayer platforms.

Fletcher v. Facebook, Inc.

Issue: Whether Facebook operates as a state actor subject to First Amendment constraints when terminating user access, either because it constitutes a public forum or because it acted under government coercion or direction.

Why It Matters: This complaint illustrates the continued assertion of public forum and state action theories against platforms post-Packingham, despite contrary controlling authority in Manhattan Community Access v. Halleck and Prager University v. Google establishing that private platforms are not state actors. The government coercion allegations invoke the framework from Murthy v. Missouri and Bantam Books, but the complaint's broad, conclusory assertions about government "coercion" and "direction" without specific factual allegations illustrate the demanding causation and traceability standards Murthy established for jawboning claims.

Rosenblum v. Passes, Inc.

Issue: Whether Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunizes Passes, Inc. from liability for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) where plaintiff alleges the platform's agents actively solicited a minor to join the platform and then marketed and distributed the resulting CSAM.

Why It Matters: This case presents a potentially significant challenge to Section 230's scope in CSAM cases by alleging that platform agents' active recruitment and marketing of a minor creator transforms the platform from a passive host into a content developer or co-creator. If the material contribution theory survives the motion to dismiss, it could narrow Section 230 immunity for platforms whose employees or agents allegedly facilitate the creation or distribution of illegal content, particularly involving minors—extending the "content developer" exception beyond algorithmic design to direct human agency and solicitation.

Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. v. De Moraes

Issue: Whether a Brazilian Supreme Court justice's orders requiring U.S.-based social media platforms to suspend user accounts and censor content accessible in the United States are enforceable under U.S. law, or whether they violate the First Amendment and conflict with the Communications Decency Act.

Why It Matters: This case presents a novel collision between foreign government content removal orders and U.S. platforms' First Amendment rights to resist compelled censorship. It could establish important precedent on whether U.S. courts will recognize foreign judicial orders as unconstitutional "jawboning" when they compel platforms to suppress lawful political speech accessible to American users, and may clarify the territorial limits of foreign content regulation authority over U.S.-based intermediaries.

Karam v. Meta Platforms, Inc.

Issue: Whether Section 230 bars claims against Meta arising from the company's decision to ban or restrict plaintiff's Facebook account and its alleged failure to prevent other users from posting content about plaintiff.

Why It Matters: This decision reinforces the broad application of Section 230 immunity to platform account termination and content moderation decisions, extending publisher immunity not only to third-party content but also to the platform's own editorial decisions about which users may access its services. The ruling demonstrates courts' continued willingness to apply Section 230 at the motion to dismiss stage to bar claims challenging fundamental platform curation functions including account access decisions.

Students Engaged in Advancing Texas v. Ken Paxton, Attorney General, State of Texas

Issue: Whether Texas HB18, a state law regulating social media platforms' content moderation and targeted advertising practices directed at minors, violates the First Amendment and is preempted by Section 230.

Why It Matters: This appeal presents a post-Moody test case for state regulation of social media platforms' treatment of minors and targeted advertising practices. The Fifth Circuit's resolution will clarify how Moody's framework for evaluating must-carry and content moderation mandates applies to age-based restrictions and commercial speech regulations, and whether Section 230 preempts state laws targeting platform design features and advertising practices rather than third-party content liability.