SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A district attorney based in Salt Lake City is declining to file charges against the founder of an anti-child-trafficking organization — made famous by the 2023 movie “Sound of Freedom” — in the wake of sexual assault claims by several women in lawsuits.
Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill issued a statement Friday saying there is “insufficient admissible evidence” and his office has declined to file charges against Tim Ballard in connection with the allegations.
“It does not mean that we disbelieve or diminish a survivor’s account, but rather that the law requires evidence strong enough to remove every reasonable doubt for a jury,” Gill said in the statement.
In two lawsuits, women have accused Ballard of exploiting his position as founder of Operation Underground Railroad and their desire to help combat child trafficking to abuse them.
Ballard has denied any wrongdoing and allegations in the lawsuits. Attorneys for Ballard could not immediately be reached for comment.
He resigned from Operation Underground Railroad amid the sexual assault allegations.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Photo: Tom Brenner/The Washington Post via Getty Images
When I was a brand new prosecutor at the Southern District of New York, the office’s elite mob prosecutors tried John Gotti Jr. three times within a year. All three times, the jury hung. Throughout the doomed prosecutorial trilogy, I’d go over to the courtroom and watch bits of the trial, enthralled at the cinematic spectacle: witnesses named Mikey Scars and Little Joey, bugged social clubs, beefs and sitdowns and hits gone good and bad.
Prosecutors technically can re-try a case after a hung jury, but generally will stop after two tries, maybe three if there’s a compelling need. After the third Gotti trial resulted in a hung jury, the SNDY did the right thing and dismissed the indictment.
Three years later, federal prosecutors in Florida decided to give it another go. They indicted Gotti again, a fourth time, on charges that incorporated much of the SDNY’s original case but added a few wrinkles. By that point, I had become a supervisor in the organized crime unit, and we wanted no part of it. Long story short: Gotti successfully moved the case back up to the SDNY, it landed in my lap, we tried him again, and the jury hung again. After the trial ended, we spoke with the jurors. About half of them wanted to convict, and the other half thought he was guilty but objected to the serial prosecutions of the Gambino Family boss. “You can’t try the same guy four times. That’s just not fair,” one juror said to me.
This was my hard but vital lesson in jury nullification. Sometimes juries just tell prosecutors to screw off.
Jury nullification has a potent but largely unspoken role in our criminal justice process. Judges do not instruct jurors that they can disregard the actual evidence and reject a case for political or emotional or other extraneous reasons. But who can stop a jury from doing just that, after all? They don’t attach a “Statement of Reasons” to a verdict form; they simply check “Guilty” or “Not Guilty,” no explanation sought or given. Defense lawyers at times try to give jurors a little wink-and-nod, but prosecutors and judges aggressively police any suggestion of nullification.
Even though it’s not formally on the books, jury nullification has its role in our democracy. Just as the jury serves as a bulwark of liberty by determining whether a defendant’s guilt has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt, so too can a jury reject cases that might be technically valid but just too much bullshit, in the broader (non-technical) sense.
This is what’s happening now to Justice Department prosecutors in Washington D.C. and elsewhere. The contagion will spread as the DOJ systematically abuses its discretion and power.
Take, for example, Sean Dunn — the D.C. Subway sandwich thrower who was acquitted last week on charges of assaulting a federal officer. A grand jury had initially rejected felony charges, and prosecutors should’ve gotten the hint right there, given that grand juries apply a low burden of proof and typically will indict anything the prosecutor puts in front of them. (Not doing the ham sandwich joke — and it was salami, anyway.) Undeterred, prosecutors pressed on with a misdemeanor assault charge and took Dunn to trial. It didn’t go any better.
This feels ridiculous to declare out loud but here goes: The sandwich thrower was obviously guilty. He intentionally and angrily threw an object at a uniformed federal officer, and hit him. The problem, of course, is that the charges don’t pass what we at the SDNY used to call the straight-face test: If you can’t make the case without cracking a smile, it’s not worth bringing.
The D.C. jury apparently applied that test and came out with an acquittal, notwithstanding the prosecution’s valiant effort to paint the hurling of a footlong as a dangerous attack. The law enforcement agent testified that he “could feel it through his ballistic vest” and, in the tragic aftermath, he “could smell the onions and mustard” before finding an onion string hanging off his equipment, and a mustard stain on his shirt. Courtroom observers reportedly laughed, and the jury apparently did too with its verdict.
This is a developing trend. In the weeks after President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard in Washington D.C., various grand juries rejected proposed federal cases involving silly or sympathetic conduct and petty (potential) charges. One case involved verbal threats made by an intellectually disabled man who had consumed seven alcoholic beverages and politely thanked the officers who arrested him. In California, grand jurors rejected proposed indictments of anti-ICE protesters, while trial juries have returned at least two acquittals. And in Virginia, a grand jury voted down one of the proposed charges against James Comey, and barely approved the other two. (If either the Comey or Letitia James cases reach trial, don’t be surprised if jurors engage in a bit of nullification, given the political tone of those prosecutions.)
Part of the problem lies in the cases that the Justice Department has chosen to bring. But more fundamentally, this is about a loss of trust. Before the current Trump administration, it was exceedingly rare for federal judges to call out the truthfulness of DOJ prosecutors. Sure, judges routinely rebuke prosecutors and reject their arguments – I’ve been there – but typically impugn the prosecutor’s honesty only in the rarest circumstances.
But in a string of federal cases, judges have openly chided the DOJ for its overreach, its failure to comply with at least the spirit of judicial orders, and its tendency to not quite fully tell the truth. One federal judge in Maryland lambasted prosecutors for their conduct on the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case: “You have taken the presumption of regularity and you’ve destroyed it in my view.” A judge in Washington D.C. flayed prosecutors for flouting his orders in an immigration case, characterizing the government’s position as, “We don’t care, we’ll do what we want.” Another D.C.-based judge noted pointedly, “Trust that has been earned over generations has been lost in weeks.” A federal judge in Illinois determined that the government’s portrayal of violence in Chicago was “simply untrue.”
Trump presently faces little meaningful opposition to his agenda, and to his excesses. The Executive Branch has largely been purged of objectors (or even some who faithfully do their jobs). The Republican-controlled House and Senate provide no friction, while Democrats flail helplessly. And the Supreme Court generally (though not always) has gone Trump’s way on executive power.
One of the few remaining checks comes from the most humble of sources – the everyday civilians who get that dreaded notice in the mail and wind up serving on grand juries and trial juries. Other than voting, it’s the most basic, populist exercise of American democracy. As long as the Justice Department continues to play politics and undermine its own credibility, don’t expect the nullification trend to stop. As I learned years ago on the Gotti case, sometimes the people have simply had enough.
NEW YORK (AP) — AT&T has reached a combined $177 million settlement over two data breaches. And impacted consumers have a little over a month left to file a claim for their chunk of the money.
Several lawsuits emerged across the U.S. — and were later consolidated — after AT&T notified millions of customers that information ranging from Social Security numbers to call records were compromised in these breaches last year. Plaintiffs alleged that the telecommunications giant “repeatedly failed” to protect consumer data. While AT&T has continued to deny wrongdoing, it opted to settle earlier this year.
“We have agreed to this settlement to avoid the expense and uncertainty of protracted litigation,” AT&T said in a Thursday statement, adding that the company remains “committed to protecting our customers’ data and ensuring their continued trust in us.”
Eligible consumers have until Dec. 18 to file for a settlement payment — which will still need a judge’s final stamp of approval early next year. Here’s what you should know.
What data breaches does the AT&T settlement cover?
The settlement covers two different breaches. Both were disclosed in 2024 — but involve data belonging to millions of current and former AT&T customers dating as far back as 2019 or earlier.
AT&T disclosed the first of these breaches in March 2024, after the company said it found that customer information from 2019 or earlier had been released on the “dark web” weeks earlier. At the time, AT&T said the breach impacted roughly 7.6 million current and 65.4 million former account holders — with leaked data including some sensitive info like Social Security numbers and passcodes.
The other breach involved call and text records of nearly all AT&T customers from May through October of 2022, as well as a small subset from Jan. 2, 2023. AT&T said it learned that data was “illegally downloaded from our workspace on a third-party cloud platform” in April of last year — and began notifying customers in July 2024, after launching an investigation. The company maintained that the leaked records included information like phone numbers, but not content of the calls or texts, or other personally identifiable information.
Several lawsuits emerged over both of these data breaches — which were later consolidated. The settlement was reached earlier this year in U.S. District Court in Texas.
How much money could impacted customers get?
The settlement’s cash funds total $177 million to pay those impacted by both of these breaches — which divvies up to $149 million for the first “settlement class” and another $28 million for the second, per a preliminary approval order filed in June.
According to the settlement administrator’s website, consumers impacted by the first breach may be eligible to up to $5,000. And those affected by the second breach may be eligible for up to $2,500. It’s also possible to be an “overlap settlement class member,” which would mean you may be eligible for payments from both of these funds.
Final payment amounts will vary depending on losses documented from each person — as well as the total number of claims received and added costs like attorney fees. And the court still has to give the settlement its final stamp of approval, in a hearing currently scheduled for Jan. 15, 2026.
When is the deadline to file a claim?
In the meantime, consumers have a little over a month left to file a claim online or by mail. The deadline is Dec. 18.
To learn more, you can visit the website of the settlement administrator, Kroll Settlement Administration. Class members can also opt-out or make an objection before Nov. 17.
NEW YORK — Lawyers representing OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, branches of the Sackler family that own it, cities, states, counties, Native American tribes, people with addiction and others across the U.S. are expected to deliver a nearly unanimous message for a bankruptcy court judge Friday: Approve a plan to settle thousands of opioid-related lawsuits against the company.
If U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane abides, it will close a long chapter — and maybe the entire book — on a legal odyssey over efforts to hold the company to account for its role in an opioid crisis connected to 900,000 deaths in the U.S. since 1999, including deaths from heroin and illicit fentanyl.
Closing arguments were expected Friday in the third day of a hearing over a bankruptcy plan for the company, which filed for protection six years ago as it faced lawsuits with claims that grew to trillions of dollars.
The saga has been emotional and full of contentious arguments between the many groups that took Purdue to court, often exposing a possible mismatch between the quest for justice and the practical role of bankruptcy court.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a previous deal because it said it was improper for Sackler family members to receive immunity from lawsuits over opioids. In the new arrangement, entities who don’t opt into the settlement can sue them. Family members are collectively worth billions, but much of their assets are held in trusts in offshore accounts that would be hard to access through lawsuits.
This time, the government groups involved have reached an even fuller consensus and there’s been mostly subdued opposition from individuals. Out of more than 54,000 personal injury victims who voted on whether the plan should be accepted. just 218 said no. A larger number of people who are part of that group didn’t vote.
A handful of objectors spoke Thursday at the hearing, sometimes interrupting the judge. Some said that only the victims, not the states and other government entities, should receive the funds in the settlement. Others wanted the judge to find the members of the Sackler family criminally liable — something Lane said is beyond the scope of the bankruptcy court, but that the settlement doesn’t bar prosecutors from pursuing.
A Florida woman whose husband struggled with addiction after being given OxyContin following an accident told the court that the deal isn’t enough.
“The natural laws of karma suggest the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma should pay for what they have done,” Pamela Bartz Halaschak said via video.
A flood of lawsuits filed by government entities against Purdue and other drugmakers, drug wholesalers and pharmacy chains began about a decade ago.
The Purdue deal would rank among the largest of them. Members of the Sackler family would be required to pay up to $7 billion and give up ownership of the company. None have been on its board or received payments since 2018. Unlike a similar hearing four years ago, none were called to testify in this week’s hearing.
The company would get a name change and new overseers who would dedicate future profits to battling the opioid crisis.
There are also some non-financial provisions. Certain members of the Sackler family would be required to give up involvement in companies that sell opioids in other countries.
Family members would also be barred from having their names added to institutions in exchange for charitable contributions. The name has already been removed from museums and universities.
And company documents, including many that would normally be subject to lawyer-client privilege, are to be made public.
Unlike the other major opioid settlements, individuals harmed by Purdue’s products would be in line for some money as part of the settlement. About $850 million would be set aside for them, with more than $100 million of that amount carved out to help children born dealing with opioid withdrawal.
About 139,000 people have active claims for the money. Many of them, however, have not shown proof that they were prescribed Purdue’s opioids and will receive nothing. Lawyers expect that those who had prescriptions for at least six months would receive about $16,000 each and those who had them more briefly would get around $8,000. Legal fees would reduce what people actually receive.
One woman who had a family member suffer from opioid addiction told the court by video Thursday that the settlement doesn’t help people with substance use disorder.
“Tell me how you guys can sleep at night knowing people are going to get so little money they can’t do anything with it,” asked Laureen Ferrante of Staten Island, New York.
Most of the money is to go to state and local governments to be used in their efforts to mitigate damage of the opioid epidemic. Overdose death numbers have been dropping in the past few years, a decline experts believe is partly due to the impact of settlement dollars.
NEW YORK — AT&T has reached a combined $177 million settlement over two data breaches. And impacted consumers have a little over a month left to file a claim for their chunk of the money.
Several lawsuits emerged across the U.S. — and were later consolidated — after AT&T notified millions of customers that information ranging from Social Security numbers to call records were compromised in these breaches last year. Plaintiffs alleged that the telecommunications giant “repeatedly failed” to protect consumer data. While AT&T has continued to deny wrongdoing, it opted to settle earlier this year.
“We have agreed to this settlement to avoid the expense and uncertainty of protracted litigation,” AT&T said in a Thursday statement, adding that the company remains “committed to protecting our customers’ data and ensuring their continued trust in us.”
Eligible consumers have until Dec. 18 to file for a settlement payment — which will still need a judge’s final stamp of approval early next year. Here’s what you should know.
The settlement covers two different breaches. Both were disclosed in 2024 — but involve data belonging to millions of current and former AT&T customers dating as far back as 2019 or earlier.
AT&T disclosed the first of these breaches in March 2024, after the company said it found that customer information from 2019 or earlier had been released on the “dark web” weeks earlier. At the time, AT&T said the breach impacted roughly 7.6 million current and 65.4 million former account holders — with leaked data including some sensitive info like Social Security numbers and passcodes.
The other breach involved call and text records of nearly all AT&T customers from May through October of 2022, as well as a small subset from Jan. 2, 2023. AT&T said it learned that data was “illegally downloaded from our workspace on a third-party cloud platform” in April of last year — and began notifying customers in July 2024, after launching an investigation. The company maintained that the leaked records included information like phone numbers, but not content of the calls or texts, or other personally identifiable information.
Several lawsuits emerged over both of these data breaches — which were later consolidated. The settlement was reached earlier this year in U.S. District Court in Texas.
The settlement’s cash funds total $177 million to pay those impacted by both of these breaches — which divvies up to $149 million for the first “settlement class” and another $28 million for the second, per a preliminary approval order filed in June.
According to the settlement administrator’s website, consumers impacted by the first breach may be eligible to up to $5,000. And those affected by the second breach may be eligible for up to $2,500. It’s also possible to be an “overlap settlement class member,” which would mean you may be eligible for payments from both of these funds.
Final payment amounts will vary depending on losses documented from each person — as well as the total number of claims received and added costs like attorney fees. And the court still has to give the settlement its final stamp of approval, in a hearing currently scheduled for Jan. 15, 2026.
In the meantime, consumers have a little over a month left to file a claim online or by mail. The deadline is Dec. 18.
To learn more, you can visit the website of the settlement administrator, Kroll Settlement Administration. Class members can also opt-out or make an objection before Nov. 17.
Stephen and Yurany Dexter, of Flagstaff, Arizona, said their 4-month-old daughter, Rose, had to be flown by air ambulance to a children’s hospital two hours from home and treated for several weeks this summer.
Michael and Hanna Everett, of Richmond, Kentucky, said their daughter, Piper, also 4 months, was rushed to a hospital Nov. 8 with worsening symptoms of the rare and potentially deadly disease.
The lawsuits, filed in federal courts in two states, allege that the ByHeart formula the babies consumed was defective and that the company was negligent in selling it. They seek financial payment for medical bills, emotional distress and other harm.
Both families said they bought the organic formula to provide what they viewed as a natural, healthier alternative to traditional baby formulas, and that they were shocked and angered by the suffering their children endured.
“I wouldn’t guess that a product designed for a helpless, developing human in the United States could cause something this severe,” said Stephen Dexter, 44.
“She’s so little and you’re just helplessly watching this,” said Hanna Everett, 28. “It was awful.”
Rose Dexter and Piper Everett are among at least 15 infants in a dozen states who have been sickened in the outbreak that began in August, according to federal and state health officials. No deaths have been reported.
Both received the sole treatment available for botulism in children less than a year old: an IV medication called BabyBIG, made from the blood plasma of people immunized against the neurotoxins that cause the illness.
Investigations into more potential botulism cases are pending after ByHeart, the New York-based formula manufacturer, recalled all of its formula nationwide on Tuesday. At least 84 U.S. babies have been treated for infantile botulism since August, including those in the outbreak, California officials said.
The company sells about 200,000 cans of formula per month. It can take up to 30 days for signs of infantile botulism infection to appear, medical experts said.
California officials confirmed that a sample from an open can of ByHeart formula fed to an infant who fell ill contained the type of bacteria that can lead to illness.
The lawsuits filed Wednesday could be the first of many legal actions against ByHeart, said Bill Marler, a Seattle food safety lawyer who represents Dexter.
“This company potentially faces an existential crisis,” he said.
ByHeart officials didn’t respond to questions about the new lawsuits but said they would “address any legal claims in due course.”
“We remain focused on ensuring that families using ByHeart products are aware of the recall and have factual information about steps they should take,” the company said in a statement.
Parents fretted as babies grew sicker
In Rose Dexter’s case, she received ByHeart formula within days of her birth in July after breast milk was insufficient, her father said. Stephen Dexter said he went to Whole Foods to find a “natural option.”
“I’m a little concerned with things that are in food that may cause problems,” he said. “We do our best to buy something that says it’s organic.”
But Rose, who was healthy at birth, didn’t thrive on the formula. She had trouble feeding and was fussy and fretful as she got sicker. On Aug. 31, when she was 8 weeks old, her parents couldn’t wake her.
Rose was flown by air ambulance to Phoenix Children’s Hospital, where she stayed for nearly two weeks.
Hanna Everett said she used ByHeart to supplement breastfeeding starting when Piper was 6 weeks old.
“It’s supposed to be similar to breast milk,” she said.
Last weekend, Piper started showing signs of illness. Everett said she became more worried when a friend told her ByHeart had recalled two lots of its Whole Nutrition Infant Formula. When a family member checked the empty cans, they matched the recalled lots.
“I was like, ’Oh my god, we need to go to the ER,” Everett recalled.
At Kentucky Children’s Hospital, Piper’s condition worsened rapidly. Her pupils stopped dilating correctly and she lost her gag reflex. Her head and arms became limp and floppy.
Doctors immediately ordered doses of the BabyBIG medication, which had to be shipped from California, Everett said. In the meantime, Piper had to have a feeding tube and IV lines inserted.
In both cases, the babies improved after receiving treatment. Rose went home in September and she no longer requires a feeding tube. Piper went home this week.
They appear to be doing well on different formulas, the families said.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
A lawsuit has been filed against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security by the brother of Chaofeng Ge, a 32-year-old Chinese immigrant who died at a Central Pennsylvania detention facility.
At the Moshannon Valley Processing Center on Aug. 5, Ge was found dead in a shower stallwith a cloth wrapped around his neck and with his legs and hands tied behind his back, according to the lawsuit.
Yangeng Ge, the detainee’s brother, filed the lawsuit on Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, claiming federal officials unlawfully ignored his Freedom of Information Act request seeking answers about his brother’s death.
ICE’s Detainee Death Report for the inmate lists that he was brought to MVPC on July 31 after being convicted of accessing an electronic device issued to another who did not authorize use. It also lists the emergency procedures that officials took after finding Ge unresponsive.
David Rankin, a lawyer with New York-based law firm Beldock Levine & Hoffman, who is representing Ge’s family on the case, refuted this information in an emailed statement. He said he understood Ge was held at the facility for “a number of months.”
“We do not understand the information about how long he was at MVPC to be correct — which makes the whole report highly suspect,” Rankin said via email. “A chronology of what happened after they discovered him does not shed light on why it happened. … Hopefully standing up and demanding transparency will encourage others to do the same. The more we can shed light on what happens at MVPC the better.”
ICE said it “cannot comment on pending litigation.”
The lawsuit claims Ge felt isolated in MVPC because no one in the facility spoke Mandarin and the staff made no effort to communicate with him. Rankin said this allegation was corroborated by interviews with people who left the facility and medical records.
Yangeng Ge filed a FOIA request through his attorneys on Sept. 9 seeking information about his brother’s detention including details about the conditions of the facility, his treatment by personnel and the circumstances of his death, the lawsuit said.
On Sept. 15, Yangeng Ge said he received confirmation from the U.S. Postal Service that ICE received the request, but he said it went “unlawfully ignored” because the agency was required to inform him whether hey would comply within 20 days of receipt.
“The government is so committed to keeping the public in the dark about what is happening at these detention centers that it is willing to violate the law,” Jeremy Ravinsky, associate attorney at Beldock Levine & Hoffman, said in a statement. “This lawsuit calls for much needed transparency into how the government is treating detainees.”
Yangeng Geis seeking injunctive relief and for the agencies to release all records pertaining to his brother’s detention and death.
“I am devastated by the loss of my brother and by the knowledge that he was suffering so greatly in that detention center,” he said in a statement. “He did not deserve to be treated that way. I want justice for my brother, answers as to how this could have happened and accountability for those responsible for his death.”
Marion County was among multiple defendants in five federal lawsuits filed by the Marion County Record’s parent company, the paper’s publisher, newspaper employees, a former Marion City Council member whose home also was raided, and the estate of the publisher’s 98-year-old mother, the paper’s co-owner, who died the day after the raid. An attorney for the newspaper, Bernie Rhodes, released a copy of the five-page signed agreement Tuesday.
Eric Meyer, the paper’s editor and publisher, told The Associated Press he is hoping the size of the payment is large enough to discourage similar actions against news organizations in the future. Legal claims against the city and city officials have not been settled, and Meyer said he believes they will face a larger judgment though he doesn’t expect those claims to be resolved for some time.
“The goal isn’t to get the money. The money is symbolic,” Meyer said. “The press has basically been under assault.”
The raid triggered a national debate about press freedom focused on Marion, a town of about 1,900 people set among rolling prairie hills about 150 miles (240 kilometers) southwest of Kansas City, Missouri. Meyer’s 98-year-old mother, Joan, lived with him and died of a heart attack that he blamed on the stress of the raid.
Three days after the raid, the local prosecutor said there wasn’t enough evidence to justify it. Experts said Marion’s police chief at the time, Gideon Cody, was on legally shaky ground when he ordered the raid, and a former top federal prosecutor for Kansas suggested that it might have been a criminal violation of civil rights, saying: “I’d probably have the FBI starting to look.”
Two special prosecutors who reviewed the raid and its aftermath said nearly a year later that the Record had committed no crimes before Cody led the raid, that the warrants signed by a judge contained inaccurate information from an “inadequate investigation” and the searches were not legally justified. Cody resigned as police chief in October 2023.
Cody is scheduled to go to trial in February in Marion County on a felony charge of interfering with a judicial process, accused by the two special prosecutors of persuading a potential witness to withhold information from authorities when they later investigated his conduct. He had pleaded not guilty and did not respond to a text message Tuesday seeking comment about the county’s agreement.
Attorneys for the city and the county and the county administrator did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Sheriff Jeff Soyez issued an apology that mentioned the Meyers by name, along with former council member Ruth Herbel and her husband.
“The Sheriff’s Office wishes to express its sincere regrets to Eric and Joan Meyer and Ruth and Ronald Herbel for its participation in the drafting and execution of the Marion County Police Department’s search warrants on their homes and the Marion County Record,” the sheriff’s statement said.
The Marion County Commission approved the agreement Monday after discussing it in private for 15 minutes.
A search warrant tied the raid — which was led by Marion’s police chief — to a dispute between the newspaper and a local restaurant owner who had accused the Marion County Record of invading her privacy and illegally accessing information about her and her driving record.
Meyer has said he believed the newspaper’s aggressive coverage of local politics and issues played a role and that his newsroom had been examining the police chief’s past work history.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Republicans filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday to block a new U.S. House map that California voters decisively approved at the ballot.
Proposition 50, backed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, is designed to help Democrats flip as many as five congressional House seats in the midterm elections next year. The lawsuit claims the map-makers improperly used race as a factor to favor Hispanic voters “without cause or evidence to justify it,” and asks the court to block the new boundaries ahead of the 2026 elections. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, is funded by the National Republican Congressional Committee.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during an election night press conference at a California Democratic Party office Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during an election night press conference at a California Democratic Party office Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
The Supreme Court has ruled that “states may not, without a compelling reason backed by evidence that was in fact considered, separate citizens into different voting districts on the basis of race,” the lawsuit says.
There have been two analyses showing there were no voting rights problems that warranted the redrawing of the map, it adds.
The complaint was filed by The Dhillon Law Group, the California-based firm started by Harmeet Dhillon, who is now an assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice.
The lawsuit also alleges that state lawmakers and a mapmaking consultant admitted in public statements that they intentionally redrew some districts to have a Latino majority. In one of the press releases from state Democrats, lawmakers said that the new map “retains and expands Voting Rights Act districts that empower Latino voters” while making no changes to Black majority districts in the Oakland and Los Angeles areas, the lawsuit says.
“The map is designed to favor one race of California voters over others,” Mike Columbo, whose plaintiffs include a state Republican lawmaker and 18 other voters, said at a news conference Wednesday. “This violates the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law, and the right under the 15th Amendment.”
Corrin Rankin, chairwoman of the California Republican Party, speaks to reporters during a press conference announcing a federal lawsuit challenging Proposition 50, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
Corrin Rankin, chairwoman of the California Republican Party, speaks to reporters during a press conference announcing a federal lawsuit challenging Proposition 50, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
The mapmaking consultant Paul Mitchell declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation.
Newsom’s office said on a social media post that the state hasn’t reviewed the lawsuit but is confident the challenge will fail.
“Good luck, losers,” the post reads.
Democrats said the measure is their best chance to blunt Texas Republicans’ move to redraw their own maps to pick up five GOP seats at Trump’s urging.
It’s unclear whether a three-judge panel convened to hear such cases would grant a temporary restraining order before Dec. 19, the date when candidates can start collecting voter signatures to qualify for the ballot. It’s essentially the first step in officially running in the 2026 midterm elections. Columbo said he’s hoping to get a decision in the upcoming weeks and predicted the case to reach the Supreme Court.
Republicans have filed multiple lawsuits in California to block Democrats’ plan with little success so far.
Seven families filed lawsuits against OpenAI on Thursday, claiming that the company’s GPT-4o model was released prematurely and without effective safeguards. Four of the lawsuits address ChatGPT’s alleged role in family members’ suicides, while the other three claim that ChatGPT reinforced harmful delusions that in some cases resulted in inpatient psychiatric care.
In one case, 23-year-old Zane Shamblin had a conversation with ChatGPT that lasted more than four hours. In the chat logs — which were viewed by TechCrunch — Shamblin explicitly stated multiple times that he had written suicide notes, put a bullet in his gun, and intended to pull the trigger once he finished drinking cider. He repeatedly told ChatGPT how many ciders he had left and how much longer he expected to be alive. ChatGPT encouraged him to go through with his plans, telling him, “Rest easy, king. You did good.”
OpenAI released the GPT-4o model in May 2024, when it became the default model for all users. In August, OpenAI launched GPT-5 as the successor to GPT-4o, but these lawsuits particularly concern the 4o model, which had known issues with being overly sycophantic or excessively agreeable, even when users expressed harmful intentions.
“Zane’s death was neither an accident nor a coincidence but rather the foreseeable consequence of OpenAI’s intentional decision to curtail safety testing and rush ChatGPT onto the market,” the lawsuit reads. “This tragedy was not a glitch or an unforeseen edge case — it was the predictable result of [OpenAI’s] deliberate design choices.”
The lawsuits also claim that OpenAI rushed safety testing to beat Google’s Gemini to market. TechCrunch contacted OpenAI for comment.
These seven lawsuits build upon the stories told in other recent legal filings, which allege that ChatGPT can encourage suicidal people to act on their plans and inspire dangerous delusions. OpenAI recently released data stating that over one million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly.
In the case of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old who died by suicide, ChatGPT sometimes encouraged him to seek professional help or call a helpline. However, Raine was able to bypass these guardrails by simply telling the chatbot that he was asking about methods of suicide for a fictional story he was writing.
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The company claims it is working on making ChatGPT handle these conversations in a safer manner, but for the families who have sued the AI giant, these changes are coming too late.
When Raine’s parents filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in October, the company released a blog post addressing how ChatGPT handles sensitive conversations around mental health.
“Our safeguards work more reliably in common, short exchanges,” the post says. “We have learned over time that these safeguards can sometimes be less reliable in long interactions: as the back-and-forth grows, parts of the model’s safety training may degrade.”
OpenAI is facing seven lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide and harmful delusions even when they had no prior mental health issues.
The lawsuits filed Thursday in California state courts allege wrongful death, assisted suicide, involuntary manslaughter and negligence. Filed on behalf of six adults and one teenager by the Social Media Victims Law Center and Tech Justice Law Project, the lawsuits claim that OpenAI knowingly released GPT-4o prematurely, despite internal warnings that it was dangerously sycophantic and psychologically manipulative. Four of the victims died by suicide.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.
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The teenager, 17-year-old Amaurie Lacey, began using ChatGPT for help, according to the lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court. But instead of helping, “the defective and inherently dangerous ChatGPT product caused addiction, depression, and, eventually, counseled him on the most effective way to tie a noose and how long he would be able to “live without breathing.’”
“Amaurie’s death was neither an accident nor a coincidence but rather the foreseeable consequence of OpenAI and Samuel Altman’s intentional decision to curtail safety testing and rush ChatGPT onto the market,” the lawsuit says.
OpenAI called the situations “incredibly heartbreaking” and said it was reviewing the court filings to understand the details.
Another lawsuit, filed by Alan Brooks, a 48-year-old in Ontario, Canada, claims that for more than two years ChatGPT worked as a “resource tool” for Brooks. Then, without warning, it changed, preying on his vulnerabilities and “manipulating, and inducing him to experience delusions. As a result, Allan, who had no prior mental health illness, was pulled into a mental health crisis that resulted in devastating financial, reputational, and emotional harm.”
“These lawsuits are about accountability for a product that was designed to blur the line between tool and companion all in the name of increasing user engagement and market share,” said Matthew P. Bergman, founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center, in a statement.
OpenAI, he added, “designed GPT-4o to emotionally entangle users, regardless of age, gender, or background, and released it without the safeguards needed to protect them.” By rushing its product to market without adequate safeguards in order to dominate the market and boost engagement, he said, OpenAI compromised safety and prioritized “emotional manipulation over ethical design.”
In August, parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, alleging that ChatGPT coached the California boy in planning and taking his own life earlier this year.
“The lawsuits filed against OpenAI reveal what happens when tech companies rush products to market without proper safeguards for young people,” said Daniel Weiss, chief advocacy officer at Common Sense Media, which was not part of the complaints. “These tragic cases show real people whose lives were upended or lost when they used technology designed to keep them engaged rather than keep them safe.”
CHICAGO (AP) — A federal judge said Thursday she will order federal agents in Chicago to restrict using force against peaceful protesters and news media outlets, saying current practices violate their constitutional rights.
The preliminary injunction came in response to a lawsuit alleging federal agents have used excessive force in their immigration crackdown in the Chicago area.
U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis ‘s ruling, which is expected to be appealed by President Donald Trump’s administration, refines an earlier temporary order that required agents to wear badges and banned them from using certain riot-control techniques, such as tear gas, against peaceful protesters and journalists. After repeatedly chastising federal officials for not following her previous orders, she added a requirement for body cameras.
Ellis, who began Thursday’s hearing by describing Chicago as a “vibrant place” and reading from poet Carl Sandburg’s famous poem about the city, said it is “simply untrue” that the Chicago area is a violent place of rioters. A day earlier, attorneys for both sides repeatedly clashed in court over the accounts of several incidents during the immigration crackdown that began in September, including one where a Border Patrol commander threw a cannister of tear gas at a crowd.
“I don’t find defendants’ version of events credible,” Ellis said.
Ellis said agents will be required to give two warnings before using riot control weapons and that agents are restricted from using force unless it is “objectively necessary to stop an immediate threat.”
She described protesters and advocates facing tear gas, having guns pointed at them and being thrown to the ground, saying “that would cause a reasonable person to think twice about exercising their fundamental rights.”
The preliminary injunction stems from a lawsuit filed by news outlets and protesters who say agents have used too much force during demonstrations.
In court, an attorney representing the federal government said senior Border Patrol official Greg Bovino, has a body-worn camera after Ellis required him to get one and complete the training for using it at a previous hearing.
A message left Thursday for the Department of Homeland Security wasn’t immediately returned.
During Wednesday’s eight-hour hearing, witnesses gave emotional testimony when describing experiencing tear gas, being shot in the head with pepper balls while praying, and having guns pointed at them when recording agents in residential streets.
Ellis questioned witnesses about how these experiences impacted them and if they prevented them from protesting again. One after another, witnesses described their anxiety about returning to protests or advocacy work.
“I get really nervous because it just feels like I’m not safe,” Leslie Cortez, a youth organizer in the Chicago suburb of Cicero, told Ellis. “And I question my safety when I go out.”
Attorneys also played footage of a five-hour deposition, or private interview, of Bovino where he defended agents’ use of force and dodged questions about Border Patrol tactics in the nations’ third-largest city.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) — A jury in Virginia awarded $10 million Thursday to a former teacher who was shot by a 6-year-old student, siding with her claims in a lawsuit that an ex-administrator ignored repeated warnings that the child had a gun.
The jury returned its decision against Ebony Parker, a former assistant principal at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News.
Abby Zwerner was shot in January 2023 as she sat at a reading table in her first-grade classroom. She had sought $40 million against Parker in the lawsuit.
Zwerner did not address reporters outside the courthouse after the decision was announced. One of her attorneys, Diane Toscano, said the verdict sends a message that what happened at the school “was wrong and is not going to be tolerated, that safety has to be the first concern at school. I think it’s a great message.”
Parker was the only defendant in the lawsuit. A judge previously dismissed the district’s superintendent and the school principal as defendants.
The lawsuit said Parker had a duty to protect Zwerner and others from harm after being told about the gun. Zwerner’s attorneys said Parker failed to act in the hours before the shooting after several school staff members told her that the student had a gun in his backpack.
“Who would think a 6-year-old would bring a gun to school and shoot their teacher?” Toscano told the jury earlier. “It’s Dr. Parker’s job to believe that that is possible. It’s her job to investigate it and get to the very bottom of it.”
Parker did not testify in the lawsuit. Her attorney, Daniel Hogan, had warned jurors about hindsight bias and “Monday morning quarterbacking” in the shooting.
““You will be able to judge for yourself whether or not this was foreseeable,” Hogan said. “That’s the heart of this case.
“The law knows that it is fundamentally unfair to judge another person’s decisions based on stuff that came up after the fact. The law requires you to examine people’s decisions at the time they make them.”
The shooting occurred on the first day after the student had returned from a suspension for slamming Zwerner’s phone two days earlier.
Zwerner testified she first heard about the gun prior to class recess from a reading specialist who had been tipped off by students. The shooting occurred a few hours later. Despite her injuries, Zwerner was able to hustle her students out of the classroom. She eventually passed out in the school office.
“I thought I was either on my way to heaven or in heaven,” Zwerner said. “But then it all got black. And so, I then thought I wasn’t going there. And then my next memory is I see two co-workers around me and I process that I’m hurt and they’re putting pressure on where I’m hurt.”
Zwerner no longer works for the school district and has said she has no plans to teach again. She has since become a licensed cosmetologist.
Parker faces a separate criminal trial this month on eight counts of felony child neglect. Each of the counts is punishable by up to five years in prison in the event of a conviction.
The student’s mother was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for felony child neglect and federal weapons charges. Her son told authorities he got his mother’s handgun by climbing onto a drawer to reach the top of a dresser, where the firearm was in his mom’s purse.
Raby reported from Cross Lanes, West Virginia.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
SAN FRANCISCO — Video game maker Epic Games has reached a “comprehensive settlement” with Google that could end its 5-year-old legal crusade targeting Google’s Play Store for Android apps.
Epic and Google revealed the settlement agreement in a joint legal document they filed in a San Francisco federal court Tuesday.
They said it “would allow the parties to put their disputes aside while making Android a more vibrant and competitive platform for users and developers.”
Epic, which makes the hit online game Fortnite, won a victory over the summer when a federal appeals court upheld a jury verdict condemning Google’s Android app store as an illegal monopoly. The unanimous ruling cleared the way for a federal judge to enforce a potentially disruptive shake-up that’s designed to give consumers more choices.
The specific terms of the settlement agreement remain under seal and must be approved by U.S. District Judge James Donato, but the two companies broadly outlined some of their agreements in their joint filing.
They said the settlement closely follows Donato’s October 2024 ruling ordering Google to tear down the digital walls shielding its Android app store from competition. That included a provision that will require its app store to distribute rival third-party app stores so consumers can download them to their phones, if they so desire.
Google had hoped to void those changes with an appeal, but the ruling issued in July by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a legal blow for the tech giant, which has been waylaid in three separate antitrust trials affecting different pillars of its internet empire.
Epic Games filed lawsuits targeting Google’s Play Store as well as Apple’s iPhone app store in 2020 in an attempt to bypass exclusive payment processing systems that charged 15% to 30% commissions on in-app transactions. The settlement agreement proposed Tuesday calls for Google to limit those payments to between 9% and 20%, depending on the transaction.
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney called the settlement an “awesome proposal” in a social media post. A hearing is set for Thursday.
LONDON (AP) — Artificial intelligence company Stability AI mostly prevailed against Getty Images Tuesday in a British court battle over intellectual property.
Seattle-based Getty had accused Stability AI of infringing its copyright and trademark by scraping 12 million images from its website, without permission, to train its popular image generator, Stable Diffusion.
The closely followed case at Britain’s High Court was among the first in a wave of lawsuits involving generative AI as movie studios, authors and artists challenged tech companies’ use of their works to train AI chatbots.
Tech companies have long argued that “fair use” or “fair dealing” legal doctrines in the United States and United Kingdom allow them to train their AI systems on large troves of writings or images. Tuesday’s ruling provides some clarity but still leaves big unanswered questions over copyright and AI, experts said.
According to the judge’s written ruling, Getty narrowly won its argument that Stability had infringed its trademark, but lost the rest of its case.
Both sides claimed victory.
“This is a significant win for intellectual property owners,” Getty Images said in a statement.
Shares of Getty dipped 3% before the opening bell in the U.S.
Stability, based in London, said it was pleased with the ruling.
“This final ruling ultimately resolves the copyright concerns that were the core issue,” Stability’s General Counsel Christian Dowell said.
Getty had accused Stability of both primary and secondary copyright infringement.
Legal experts said the first one involves the act of reproducing something without permission — similar to a dodgy factory churning out counterfeit Chanel handbags or pirated CDs — while the second involves importing those copies from another country.
In this case, Getty said Stability’s use of its image library to train and develop Stable Diffusion’s AI model amounted to breach of primary copyright. Stability responded that the case doesn’t belong in the United Kingdom because the AI model’s training technically happened elsewhere, on computers run by U.S. tech giant Amazon.
During the three-week trial in June, Getty dropped its primary copyright allegations, in a sign that it didn’t think they would succeed. But it still pursued the secondary infringement claims. Even if Stability’s AI training happened outside the U.K., Getty said offering the Stable Diffusion service to British users amounted to importing unlawful copies of its images into the country.
Justice Joanna Smith rejected Getty’s claims, ruling that Stable Diffusion’s AI didn’t infringe copyright because it doesn’t “store or reproduce any Copyright Works (and has never done so).”
Getty also sued for trademark infringement because its watermark appeared on some of the images generated by Stability’s chatbot.
The judge sided with Getty but added that the case only partially succeeded, and that her findings are “both historic and extremely limited in scope.”
“While I have found instances of trademark infringement, I have been unable to determine that these were widespread,” she said.
Experts said Getty’s move to drop part of its copyright case means AI training is still in legal limbo.
“The decision leaves the U.K. without a meaningful verdict on the lawfulness of an AI model’s process of learning from copyright materials,” said Iain Connor, an intellectual property partner at law firm Michelmores.
Smith said there was “very real societal importance” in deciding how to strike a balance between the creative and tech industries. But she added that the court can only rule on the “diminished” case that remained and couldn’t consider “issues that have been abandoned.”
A Getty spokeswoman declined to say whether there would be an appeal.
Getty is also pursuing a copyright infringement lawsuit in the United States against Stability. It originally sued in 2023 but refiled the case in a San Francisco federal court in August.
The Getty lawsuits are among a slew of cases that highlight how the generative AI boom is fueling a clash between tech companies and creative industries.
AI companies are now fighting more than 50 copyright lawsuits — so many that a tech industry lobby group has called on President Donald Trump for help stop the court fights, saying they threaten AI innovation.
Among the cases, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit by authors while a federal judge dismissed a similar lawsuit from 13 authors against Meta Platforms. Warner Bros. has sued Midjourney for copyright infringement, as have Disney and Universal in seperate lawsuits, alleging that its image generator creates copyrighted characters.
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AP Technology Writer Matt O’Brien contributed to this report.
The preliminary injunction hearing stems from a lawsuit filed by news outlets and protesters who say agents have used too much force, including tear gas, during demonstrations.
U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis has already ordered agents to wear badges and banned them from using certain riot-control techniques, such as tear gas, against peaceful protesters and journalists. After repeatedly chastising federal officials for not following her previous orders, she added a requirement for body cameras.
The hearing comes after Ellis questioned senior Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino at a public hearing last week, where she took the rare step of ordering him to brief her each evening on the federal immigration crackdown in Chicago. That move was swiftly blocked by an appeals court.
On Tuesday, Bovino appeared in court yet again for a deposition — a private interview — with lawyers from both sides. Parts of the videotaped deposition will be played in court Wednesday, according to court filings.
Attorneys may also call to the stand a pastor who was hit in the head by a container containing a chemical agent while praying outside a federal immigration facility in the west Chicago suburb of Broadview, local officials detained during protests outside the facility, and a protester who alleges she was hit by a flash-bang grenade that caused temporary hearing loss, court records show.
Court filings released late Monday night shed light on a previous deposition by Bovino in which he acknowledged tossing tear gas and being hit by a rock in the predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood of Little Village last month. Bovino also testified that he has “instructed his officers to arrest protesters who make hyperbolic comments in the heat of political demonstrations,” court records show.
Meanwhile, a federal judge is expected to rule Wednesday afternoon after a group of detainees filed a class-action lawsuit against federal authorities, alleging “inhuman” conditions at a Chicago-area immigration facility.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman called the alleged conditions “unnecessarily cruel” after hearing people held at the facility detail overflowing toilets, crowded cells, no beds and water that “tasted like sewer.” He called for the hearing to reconvene at 4:15 p.m. local time Wednesday so that he can issue a temporary restraining order to address the conditions.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Holly Springs officials have filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Mississippi Public Service Commission accusing the agency of exceeding its authority and for violating the city’s right to due process.
The complaint, filed Thursday, comes less than two months since the PSC voted to impose daily fines of up to $12,500 against the city for failing to address deficiencies with its power system. The Holly Springs Utility Department, which serves about 12,000 customers across multiple counties, has struggled for years to maintain its power grid infrastructure and subsequently left customers with frequent electric outages.
In September, just days before imposing the daily fines, the PSC held a hearing in New Albany to listen to the utility’s customers and to give city officials a chance to respond. After the session, the three-member commission voted unanimously to move forward with steps to place the utility into a receivership.
But the commission, the new complaint alleges, overstepped its authority by interfering with the city’s contract with the Tennessee Valley Authority. Since 1935, Holly Springs has purchased and distributed electricity from TVA, a federal agency created under the New Deal to provide power to rural areas in the Southeast. Because TVA is a federal body, the lawsuit says, the PSC can’t “intrude upon” the city’s power agreement.
TVA, though, has itself recently sued Holly Springs for multiple breaches of the contract. That lawsuit, filed in May, alleges the city took money from the utility department before ensuring the electric system was stable, among other financial mishaps. After a stay in the case, U.S. District Judge Debra Brown ordered the parties last week to show cause by Tuesday.
The PSC didn’t allow the city an “opportunity to cure (its) alleged negligence,” Holly Springs’ lawsuit also claims. The city had elected a new mayor and brought on new counsel shortly before the September hearing.
“As a result, the Plaintiff was unable to conduct a full review of the case file, identify relevant evidence, or prepare a complete presentation of its position,” the complaint says. “Proceeding under such circumstances deprived the Plaintiff of a meaningful opportunity to be heard, in violation of fundamental due process principles.”
The PSC’s authority over the city’s utility department came from state legislation in 2024. Republican Sen. Neil Whaley of Potts Camp wrote the bill, which allows the PSC to investigate whether utility service for certain customers is “reasonably adequate.” The commission’s September hearing found Holly Springs fell short of that bar.
The PSC told Mississippi Today on Monday that it has only issued one fine of $12,500 against the city so far. Kyle Jones, an attorney for the commission, said, while the city is subject to further fines as long as it provides inadequate service, the PSC would have to hold another hearing before it could actually impose more fines.
Regarding next steps toward placing the utility under a receivership, the PSC said it would present its petition to a chancery court judge through the state attorney general’s office. The AG’s office did not respond to a request for comment before publication.
This story was originally published by Mississippi Today and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Seattle-based Getty Images, which owns an extensive online library of images and video, had filed suit against Stability AI in a widely watched case that went to trial at Britain’s High Court in June.
The case was among a wave of lawsuits filed by movie studios, authors and artists challenging tech companies’ use of their works to train AI chatbots.
According to a judge’s ruling released Tuesday, Getty narrowly won its argument that Stability had infringed its trademark, but lost its claim for secondary infringement of copyright.
Both sides claimed victory.
“This is a significant win for intellectual property owners,” Getty Images said in a statement.
Shares of Getty dipped 3% before the opening bell in the U.S.
Stability said it was pleased with the ruling.
“This final ruling ultimately resolves the copyright concerns that were the core issue,” Stability General Counsel Christian Dowell said.
Getty argued that the development of Stability’s AI image maker, called Stable Diffusion, was a “brazen infringement” of its library of images “on a staggering scale.”
While Getty accused Stability of infringing both its copyright and trademark, the company dropped its primary copyright allegations during the trial, indicating that it didn’t think its arguments would succeed.
Getty also sued for trademark infringement because its watermark appeared on some of the images generated by Stability’s chatbot.
Justice Joanna Smith said in her ruling that Getty’s trademark claims “succeed (in part)” but that her findings are “both historic and extremely limited in scope.”
Stability argued that the case doesn’t belong in the United Kingdom because the AI model’s training technically happened elsewhere, on computers run by U.S. tech giant Amazon. It also argued that “only a tiny proportion” of the random outputs of its AI image-generator “look at all similar” to Getty’s works.
Tech companies have long argued that “fair use” or “fair dealing” legal doctrines in the United States and United Kingdom allow them to train their AI systems on large troves of writings or images.
Getty is also still pursuing a claim of “secondary infringement” of copyright, saying that even if Stability’s AI training happened outside the U.K., offering the Stable Diffusion service to British users amounted to importing unlawful copies of its images into the country.
Smith dismissed Getty’s argument, saying that Stable Diffusion’s AI didn’t infringe copyright because it doesn’t store “store or reproduce any Copyright Works (and has never done so).”
Getty is also pursuing a copyright infringement lawsuit in the United States against Stability. It originally sued Getty in 2023 but refiled the case in a San Francisco federal court in August.
The Getty lawsuits are among a slew of cases that highlight how the generative AI boom is fueling a clash between tech companies and creative industries.
Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit by book authors who say the company took pirated copies of their works to train its Claude chatbot.
Separately, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit from a group of 13 authors who made similar accusations against Facebook owner Meta Platforms in training its AI system Llama.
Warner Bros. has sued Midjourney for copyright infringement, alleging that its image generator enables subscribers to create AI-generated images and videos of copyrighted characters like Superman and Bugs Bunny.
Disney and Universal also sued Midjourney earlier in a separate, joint copyright lawsuit, alleging the San Francisco-based startup pirated the libraries to generate and distribute unauthorized copies of famed characters like Darth Vader and the Minions.
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AP Technology Writer Matt O’Brien contributed to this report.
SANTA ANA, Calif. — A California appeals court ruled Monday that a Huntington Beach measure requiring voter identification at the polls violates state law.
The Fourth District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana determined that the measure passed by voters in the seaside city of 200,000 people should be struck down because it conflicts with state election law, said Lee Fink, a lawyer for Huntington Beach resident Mark Bixby, who challenged the city’s measure. California Attorney General Rob Bonta also sued over the Huntington Beach law contending it would disenfranchise voters.
“Voting is the fundamental right from which all other rights flow, and no matter where threats to that right come from — whether from Washington D.C. or from within California — we will continue holding the line,” Bonta said in a statement. “California’s elections are already fair, safe, and secure.”
Corbin Carson, a Huntington Beach spokesperson, said the city is reviewing the appeals court’s ruling.
Residents of Huntington Beach voted last year to let local officials require voter identification at the polls starting in 2026. The measure also allows the city to increase in-person voting sites and monitor ballot drop boxes in local elections.
Bonta filed a lawsuit saying the measure conflicts with state law and could make it harder for poor, non-white, young, elderly and disabled voters to cast ballots. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, then signed into state law a measure barring local governments from establishing and enforcing laws that require residents provide identification to vote in elections.
Huntington Beach, which is known as “Surf City USA” for its scenic shoreline dotted with surfers, has a history of sparring with state officials over the measures it can take under its city charter on issues ranging from immigration to housing. The GOP is dominant in Huntington Beach with nearly 57,000 registered voters versus 41,000 Democrats, county data shows.
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — A California appeals court ruled Monday that a Huntington Beach measure requiring voter identification at the polls violates state law.
The Fourth District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana determined that the measure passed by voters in the seaside city of 200,000 people should be struck down because it conflicts with state election law, said Lee Fink, a lawyer for Huntington Beach resident Mark Bixby, who challenged the city’s measure. California Attorney General Rob Bonta also sued over the Huntington Beach law contending it would disenfranchise voters.
“Voting is the fundamental right from which all other rights flow, and no matter where threats to that right come from — whether from Washington D.C. or from within California — we will continue holding the line,” Bonta said in a statement. “California’s elections are already fair, safe, and secure.”
Corbin Carson, a Huntington Beach spokesperson, said the city is reviewing the appeals court’s ruling.
Residents of Huntington Beach voted last year to let local officials require voter identification at the polls starting in 2026. The measure also allows the city to increase in-person voting sites and monitor ballot drop boxes in local elections.
Bonta filed a lawsuit saying the measure conflicts with state law and could make it harder for poor, non-white, young, elderly and disabled voters to cast ballots. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, then signed into state law a measure barring local governments from establishing and enforcing laws that require residents provide identification to vote in elections.
Huntington Beach, which is known as “Surf City USA” for its scenic shoreline dotted with surfers, has a history of sparring with state officials over the measures it can take under its city charter on issues ranging from immigration to housing. The GOP is dominant in Huntington Beach with nearly 57,000 registered voters versus 41,000 Democrats, county data shows.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.