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.
BOSTON, Massachusetts: Two federal judges ruled on October 31 that President Donald Trump’s administration cannot halt food assistance for millions of Americans during the ongoing government shutdown. They ordered the government to rely on existing contingency funds to keep benefits flowing.
The rulings, issued in federal courts in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, came in response to separate lawsuits challenging the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s plan that stopped Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits on November 1. SNAP, also known as food stamps, helps low-income households afford groceries. For weeks, Democrats and Republicans in Congress have blamed each other for the shutdown, which has put SNAP payments at risk.
It remains uncertain whether the decisions guarantee that benefits will be issued. Both judges asked the administration to update them on November 3 on how it will follow the orders.
Trump posted on social media that the federal government may lack legal authority to distribute SNAP funds during a shutdown. He said administration lawyers are asking courts for guidance on how to restore payments quickly. “If we are given the appropriate legal direction by the Court, it will BE MY HONOR to provide the funding,” he wrote.
SNAP benefits go to households earning less than 130 percent of the federal poverty level. In many states, that currently means about US$1,632 per month for a single person or $2,215 for two people. While the federal government funds the program, states handle daily operations and distribute monthly payments.
According to the USDA, it costs between $8.5 and $9 billion per month to fully fund SNAP for the roughly 42 million Americans who rely on it. The administration has argued that the agency has no authority to spend that money during the shutdown, which began on October 1, until Congress approves new funding.
However, U.S. District Judge John McConnell in Providence said the administration’s refusal to use $5.25 billion in available contingency funds was arbitrary and would cause real harm to families worried about access to food. He ordered that those funds be distributed as soon as possible and said the agency should also consider tapping a separate account that holds about $23 billion if needed.
Minutes earlier, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston reached a similar conclusion. Her ruling came in a case brought by 25 Democratic-led states and Washington, D.C. She said the suspension of benefits was based on a mistaken belief that the contingency funds could not legally be used during a shutdown.
The USDA had previously stated that contingency money could keep benefits going if Congress failed to pass a budget. But last week, the agency changed its position and warned that “the well has run dry,” triggering the legal challenges.
Despite administration claims that the payment systems might struggle or that partial benefits would be too difficult to distribute, both judges stressed that the government has the authority and responsibility to fully fund SNAP during the shutdown.
Artificial intelligence song generation platform Udio said it would give its frustrated users 48 hours starting Monday to download their songs before the company shifts to a new business model to comply with a legal settlement.
The short reprieve comes after Udio on Wednesday said it had settled copyright infringement claims brought by Universal Music, a label with artists including Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Drake and Kendrick Lamar.
AI companies are now fighting so many copyright lawsuits that a tech industry lobby group, the Chamber of Progress, last week called on President Donald Trump to sign an executive order directing federal attorneys “to intervene in legal cases” to defend the industry’s practice of building generative AI tools by feeding them on copyrighted works.
Citing more than 50 pending federal cases, the group asked for help stopping court fights leading to “potentially company-killing penalties” that threaten AI innovation. But artists have warned that AI tools built on their works also threaten their livelihoods.
In the biggest settlement so far, AI company Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion — or $3,000 per book — to settle claims from authors who alleged the company illegally pirated nearly half a million of their works to train its chatbot.
Udio and Universal didn’t disclose the financial terms of their new music licensing agreements. They also said they will team up on a new streaming platform.
As part of the agreement, Udio immediately stopped allowing people to download songs they’ve created, which sparked a backlash and apparent exodus among paying users.
“We know the pain it causes to you,” Udio later said in a post on Reddit’s Udio forum, where users were venting about feeling betrayed by the platform’s surprise move and complained that it limited what they could do with their music.
Udio said it still must stop downloads as it transitions to a new streaming platform next year. But over the weekend, it said it will give people 48 hours starting at 11 a.m. Eastern time Monday to keep their “past creations.”
“Udio is a small company operating in an incredibly complex and evolving space, and we believe that partnering directly with artists and songwriters is the way forward,” said Udio’s post.
The settlement deal was the music industry’s first since Universal, along with Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Records, sued Udio and another AI song generator, Suno, last year over copyright infringement.
Udio and Suno pioneered AI song generation technology, which can spit out new songs based on prompts typed into a chatbot-style text box. Users, who don’t need musical talent, can merely request a tune in the style of, for example, classic rock, 1980s synth-pop or West Coast rap.
Record labels have accused the platforms of exploiting the recorded works of artists without compensating them.
In its lawsuit filed against Udio last year, Universal sought to show how specific AI-generated songs made on Udio closely resembled Universal-owned classics like Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” The Temptations’ “My Girl,” ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” and holiday favorites like “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and “Jingle Bell Rock.”
A musician-led group, the Artist Rights Alliance, said Friday that the Universal-Udio settlement represents a positive step in creating a “legitimate AI marketplace” but raised questions about whether independent artists, session musicians and songwriters will be sufficiently protected from AI practices that present an “existential threat” to their careers.
“Licensing is the only version of AI’s future that doesn’t result in the mass destruction of art and culture,” the group said. “But this promise must be available to all music creators, not just to major corporate copyright holders.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James is challenging the legitimacy of the acting U.S. attorney in Albany as she pushes back against the Trump administration’s investigation of cases she brought against the president and the National Rifle Association, according to court documents unsealed Friday.
James in August filed a motion to block subpoenas issued by acting U.S. Attorney John Sarcone for records related to the legal actions, claiming the Justice Department’s probe of the cases was retaliatory.
She also argued that Sarcone had been improperly appointed to his position and, as a result, lacked legitimate authority to authorize the subpoenas.
The subpoenas seek records related to a major civil case the Democrat James filed against President Donald Trump over alleged fraud in his personal business dealings. Another subpoena seeks records from a lawsuit involving the National Rifle Association and two senior executives.
Dozens of court documents in the case have been filed under seal in U.S. District Court since August. A federal judge in Manhattan late Friday granted James’ motion to unseal most of the entries, making them public over the objection of the Justice Department.
Judge Lorna Schofield, however, has not yet ruled on the motion to quash the subpoenas.
“Unsealing this action is not only permissible but compelled,” she wrote. “One simple fact drives this conclusion: the information at issue is not secret.”
An email seeking comment was sent to Sarcone’s office. A phone message was not immediately returned late Friday.
James has accused the Trump administration of using the justice system as a “tool of revenge” against adversaries. The attorney general has sued Trump and his Republican administration dozens of times over his policies as president and over how he conducted his private business empire.
In October, James was indicted in a federal mortgage fraud case the president pressed the Justice Department to bring. She pleaded not guilty Monday allegations she lied on mortgage papers to get favorable loan terms when purchasing a house in Norfolk, Virginia, where she has family.
In her motion to quash Sarcone’s subpoenas, James cited anonymous media reports that they were part of a grand jury investigation into allegations that James violated Trump’s civil rights in 2022 when her office sued Trump, then a private businessman.
She argued Sarcone lacked authority to issue the subpoenas because he was improperly appointed by the Trump administration.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed Sarcone to serve as the interim U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York in March. With the expiration of the 120-day interim term, Bondi designated him as first assistant U.S. attorney for the district, essentially improperly extending his role as acting U.S. attorney, according to James.
James’ lawyers in the mortgage fraud case have said they intend to challenge the appointment of the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, on similar grounds.
The indictment in that case followed the resignation of Erik Siebert as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Siebert was replaced with Halligan, a White House aide and former Trump lawyer who had never previously served as a federal prosecutor, and presented James’ case to the grand jury herself.
New York Attorney General Letitia James is challenging the legitimacy of the acting U.S. attorney in Albany as she pushes back against the Trump administration’s investigation of cases she brought against the president and the National Rifle Association, according to court documents unsealed Friday.
James in August filed a motion to block subpoenas issued by acting U.S. Attorney John Sarcone for records related to the legal actions, claiming the Justice Department’s probe of the cases was retaliatory.
She also argued that Sarcone had been improperly appointed to his position and, as a result, lacked legitimate authority to authorize the subpoenas.
The subpoenas seek records related to a major civil case the Democrat James filed against President Donald Trump over alleged fraud in his personal business dealings. Another subpoena seeks records from a lawsuit involving the National Rifle Association and two senior executives.
Dozens of court documents in the case have been filed under seal in U.S. District Court since August. A federal judge in Manhattan late Friday granted James’ motion to unseal most of the entries, making them public over the objection of the Justice Department.
Judge Lorna Schofield, however, has not yet ruled on the motion to quash the subpoenas.
“Unsealing this action is not only permissible but compelled,” she wrote. “One simple fact drives this conclusion: the information at issue is not secret.”
An email seeking comment was sent to Sarcone’s office. A phone message was not immediately returned late Friday.
James has accused the Trump administration of using the justice system as a “tool of revenge” against adversaries. The attorney general has sued Trump and his Republican administration dozens of times over his policies as president and over how he conducted his private business empire.
In October, James was indicted in a federal mortgage fraud case the president pressed the Justice Department to bring. She pleaded not guilty Monday allegations she lied on mortgage papers to get favorable loan terms when purchasing a house in Norfolk, Virginia, where she has family.
In her motion to quash Sarcone’s subpoenas, James cited anonymous media reports that they were part of a grand jury investigation into allegations that James violated Trump’s civil rights in 2022 when her office sued Trump, then a private businessman.
She argued Sarcone lacked authority to issue the subpoenas because he was improperly appointed by the Trump administration.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed Sarcone to serve as the interim U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York in March. With the expiration of the 120-day interim term, Bondi designated him as first assistant U.S. attorney for the district, essentially improperly extending his role as acting U.S. attorney, according to James.
James’ lawyers in the mortgage fraud case have said they intend to challenge the appointment of the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, on similar grounds.
The indictment in that case followed the resignation of Erik Siebert as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Siebert was replaced with Halligan, a White House aide and former Trump lawyer who had never previously served as a federal prosecutor, and presented James’ case to the grand jury herself.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
A New York judge dismissed a legal challenge Friday from Texas seeking to enforce a more than $100,000 civil judgment against a doctor accused of prescribing abortion pills to a Dallas-area woman in an early test of the state’s “shield law” designed to protect providers.
Republican Texas State Attorney General Ken Paxton wanted a New York court to enforce a civil decision from Texas against Dr. Margaret Carpenter, who practices north of New York City in Ulster County, for allegedly prescribing abortion medication via telemedicine.
But acting Ulster County Clerk Taylor Bruck refused to file the judgment, saying he was a government employee who had to comply with New York’s shield law, which protects providers from other states’ reach.
New York is among at least eight states with shield laws. Opponents of the laws argue they violate a constitutional requirement that states respect the laws and legal judgments of other states.
Justice David Gandin ruled that Bruck followed New York law and granted his motion to dismiss the petition from Texas. The judge, sitting in Kingston, wrote that the medical services Carpenter rendered are legal in New York and that they fall “squarely within the definition of ‘legally protected health activity’” under the state’s shield law.
Bruck said he was relieved.
“It seemed very clear to me that as a government employee I should not be complying with this,” he said. “Since there was no precedent for the shield law yet, it feels really good to set that precedent.”
It was not clear if the trial court judge’s ruling would be appealed. An email seeking comment was set to Paxton’s office.
A Texas judge in February ordered Carpenter to pay more than $100,000 in penalties for prescribing abortion pills to a woman near Dallas after she failed to appear in court. The judge also issued an injunction barring Carpenter from prescribing abortion medication to Texas residents.
The ruling in Texas was handed down on the same day New York Gov. Kathy Hochul rejected a request from Louisiana to extradite Carpenter, who was charged in that state with prescribing abortion pills to a pregnant minor.
Gandin also denied a motion from Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James to intervene in the case, which could have escalated the interstate court battle. The judge said her intervention was not warranted because the constitutionality of New York’s shield law was not at issue in this case.
Further, that alleged activity can’t even reliably be linked to any Meta employee, Meta claims.
Strike 3 “does not identify any of the individuals who supposedly used these Meta IP addresses, allege that any were employed by Meta or had any role in AI training at Meta, or specify whether (and which) content allegedly downloaded was used to train any particular Meta model,” Meta wrote.
Meanwhile, “tens of thousands of employees,” as well as “innumerable contractors, visitors, and third parties access the internet at Meta every day,” Meta argued. So while it’s “possible one or more Meta employees” downloaded Strike 3’s content over the past seven years, “it is just as possible” that a “guest, or freeloader,” or “contractor, or vendor, or repair person—or any combination of such persons—was responsible for that activity,” Meta claims.
Other alleged activity included a claim that a Meta contractor was directed to download adult content at his father’s house, but those downloads, too, “are plainly indicative of personal consumption,” Meta argued. That contractor worked as an “automation engineer,” Meta noted, with no apparent basis provided for why he would be expected to source AI training data in that role. “No facts plausibly” tie “Meta to those downloads,” Meta claims.
“The fact that the torrenting allegedly stopped when his contract with Meta ended says nothing about whether the alleged torrenting was performed with Meta’s knowledge or at its direction,” Meta wrote.
Meta Slams AI Training Theory as “Nonsensical”
Possibly most baffling to Meta in Strike 3’s complaint, however, is the claim about the “stealth network” of hidden IPs. This presents “yet another conundrum” that Strike 3 “fails to address,” Meta claims, writing, “why would Meta seek to ‘conceal’ certain alleged downloads of Plaintiffs’ and third-party content, but use easily traceable Meta corporate IP addresses for many hundreds of others?”
“The obvious answer is that it would not do so,” Meta claims, slamming Strike 3’s “entire AI training theory” as “nonsensical and unsupported.”
A faculty adviser for Indiana University’s student newspaper filed a federal lawsuit Thursday arguing his free speech and due process rights were violated when he was fired for refusing to ensure no news stories appeared in the homecoming print edition earlier this month.
A lawyer for the adviser, Jim Rodenbush, said it’s a case seeking “to have a court state that the First Amendment still matters.”
Rodenbush, in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, seeks reinstatement to his job and monetary damages. He was dismissed Oct. 14 for his “lack of leadership and ability to work in alignment with the university’s direction for the Student Media Plan,” according to David Tolchinsky, dean of the university’s media school, who also ended the newspaper’s print product.
“The question is if a university doesn’t like the content of the student newspaper, can it simply pull the plug on the student newspaper,” Rodenbush’s attorney, Jonathan Little, said.
Phone and email messages were left for university spokespersons. The school issued a statement earlier saying it was shifting publication from print to digital platforms for educational and financial purposes, while the chancellor said in a statement that “free expression and editorial independence” were unfettered.
Subsidized by $250,000 a year because of dwindling ad revenue, The Daily Student, regularly honored as among the nation’s best collegiate news organizations, had its weekly print editions reduced to seven special sections a year. Rodenbush said this fall, administrators questioned why the special sections still had hard news content.
Rodenbush told Tolchinsky editorial decisions belonged to the student staff alone before Tolchinsky fired him and terminated future print editions.
The dismissal came days before the scheduled publication of the paper’s homecoming edition, which would have greeted tens of thousands of alumni returning to Bloomington to celebrate the undefeated Hoosiers football team, currently ranked No. 2 nationally.
“In a direct assault on the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, IU fired James Rodenbush when he refused the directive to censor student work in the campus newspaper and print only fluff pieces about the upcoming homecoming festivities,” the complaint reads.
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Two years after state lawmakers passed a sweeping law aimed at preventing Texas cities from adopting progressive policies, that law may finally get its first major test.
Three Dallas residents sued the city in Denton County District Court Wednesday to strike down dozens of local ordinances they allege violate the law, dubbed the “Death Star” law by opponents. The law made it illegal for cities and counties to enact local laws that go further than certain broad areas of state law.
“Cities don’t get to pick and choose which state laws they follow,” said Matthew Chiarizio, a senior attorney for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the influential conservative think tank, who is representing the plaintiffs. “For too long, Dallas has piled unnecessary and duplicative regulations on its citizens. The Legislature has rightly preempted those rules, and this lawsuit is about protecting Texans’ freedom to live and work without being smothered by layers of needless local regulation.”
A representative for the city of Dallas declined to comment, citing litigation.
Some 83 ordinances could be wiped out if a judge sides with the plaintiffs. Among them are a slew of local protections for LGBTQ+ people, rules that city contractors pay employees a living wage and noise regulations for public parks and recreational facilities.
Dallas officials could also be prevented from regulating ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft that operate at Dallas Love Field Airport, valet parking services and gas drilling and production within city limits.
State lawmakers passed the legislation in 2023. Gov. Greg Abbott, GOP legislators and business groups had long sought such a measure, which they said was necessary to undo a “patchwork” of local regulations across the state they say burden businesses and hamper the state’s economic growth. The bill’s passage also marked the culmination of Republican lawmakers’ attempts over the last decade to undercut the state’s largest urban areas, often governed by Democrats.
Critics of the bill countered it would prevent cities and counties from enacting protections for its residents, including water breaks for construction workers and noise regulations.
Houston, San Antonio and El Paso sued to block the law a month after it passed. A Travis County judge ruled the law unconstitutional in 2023. In July, the Third Court of Appeals overturned that decision and cleared the way for the Dallas lawsuit.
This story was originally published by The Texas Tribune 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.
A group of Montana doctors and nurses is suing the national company that runs a rigorous, often mandatory monitoring program for health care providers grappling with addiction. The case is the latest instance of public criticism about how the state-mandated program for more than 60,000 medical licensees operates.
The class-action lawsuit was filed on Tuesday in the Missoula division of Montana’s federal district court on behalf of one doctor and 10 nurses around the state. Those plaintiffs, the filing said, were “subjected to punitive, expensive, and clinically unwarranted monitoring practices” by the Virginia-based contractor Maximus, Inc. The lawsuit said it seeks to represent all “similarly situated” individuals, including all current and past participants of Maximus’ program.
In their initial complaint, attorneys for the plaintiffs accused Maximus of creating arbitrary sanctions for participants, failing to follow clinical recommendations, shielding documents and records from review, and “keeping participants in the program for indefinite periods without clinically-justified extensions of monitoring.”
In the same filing, attorneys for the plaintiffs also said that the drug tests and peer support groups required by Maximus are “exorbitantly expensive” for participants, alleging that the contractor is prioritizing profits over clinical best practices for supporting addiction recovery.
“Maximus runs the program as punitive, invasive, and punishingly expensive, all to the detriment of its participants,” the lawsuit said.
A spokesperson for Maximus, Inc., declined to comment on the lawsuit Wednesday. The company has not filed any legal responses to the initial complaint, according to the federal case records.
Maximus was hired by the Department of Labor and Industry to run the Montana Recovery Program beginning in 2023, after a tumultuous transition between vendors. The Montana Professional Assistance Program, the prior nonprofit that ran the professional support and monitoring program for decades, dissolved after losing the state contract in 2021.
State law directs licensing boards to establish monitoring and assistance programs as part of their oversight of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, dentists and, more recently, chiropractors and veterinarians. Though not treatment providers, professional assistance programs around the country are often tasked with establishing drug testing, peer support and workplace guidelines for medical providers with a history of addiction or mental health issues.
An August audit conducted by nonpartisan legislative staff members found that dozens of Montana participants polled by auditors reported much lower satisfaction with Maximus compared to previous program operators. Several participants contacted auditors directly, the report said, describing Maximus’ program as “punitive rather than supportive.”
The federal lawsuit filed on Tuesday reiterated many of those complaints. In one section of the initial complaint, attorneys said the program arbitrarily marked participants as noncompliant, leading to a loss of participant trust, sanctions and “prolonged monitoring and indefinite retention in the program.”
Another part of the lawsuit alleged that plaintiffs regularly had to pay $300 for one drug test, followed by additional tests in the same week, a practice attorneys said was “not clinically indicated and unnecessary.” The complaint said the frequency and cost of the testing established by Maximus could be “potentially for financial gain.”
Gregory Pinski, the attorney representing the plaintiffs, did not make the nurses or doctor named in the lawsuit available for an interview Wednesday afternoon.
The complaint comes as officials within Gov. Greg Gianforte’s labor department work to review existing state laws about professional assistance programs for medical providers and reconsider the scope of the contract Maximus was hired to execute.
An advisory council tasked with carrying out that assessment met for the first time in early October. The group came away with a recommendation to extend Maximus’ contract for a year while the labor department solicits public comment about the program, researches other models and searches for a suitable vendor to meet the state’s needs. Maximus’ current contract is slated to end in December.
As of Wednesday, the advisory group has not released a public notice about another meeting.
This story was originally published by the Montana Free Press and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
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For the second time this year, Denver Public Schools board members on Wednesday took John Youngquist to task for his behavior toward district staff, but the director was defiant in the face of his colleagues’ criticism as he reiterated his belief that district employees are retaliating against him.
Youngquist called the allegations of racism and creating a hostile work environment made by Superintendent Alex Marrero and other district staff in recent months an attempt to “intimidate and diminish me.”
“It has become clear certain members of the board and district leadership have attempted to impeach my credibility,” he said during Wednesday’s board meeting.
School board members called the meeting to discuss the results of a third-party investigation that found Youngquist displayed “belittling, dismissive and condescending behavior” toward DPS staff. As directors weighed in on the findings, which were released Monday, they called for a moment of reflection, but did not say what action they might take in response to the report.
John Youngquist, right, looks at Superintendent Alex Marrero as he speaks with the board during a special Denver Public Schools board meeting on Oct. 29, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
Directors are considering whether to censure — or formally rebuke — Youngquist and plan to continue the conversation during a Nov. 13 meeting, which could result in such a vote.
“There’s definitely something that’s not working well in board interactions with staff, so we would want to talk about what would be next steps,” board President Carrie Olson said. “…This is something we don’t want to rush.”
The investigation was conducted by attorneys with the Denver-based firm Garnett Powell Maximon Barlow and Farbes, which the board hired to look into Marrero’s allegations.
In the spring, Marrero accused Youngquist of hostile behavior toward DPS employees — especially staff of color — and of wanting his job, in an email sent to Olson. Marrero, in his email, requested that the board take the rare step of censuring Youngquist for his actions.
A censure is the strongest step the school board can take to formally reprimand a colleague. The board does not have the authority to remove a member.
A DPS board last censured a member in 2021 after a third-party investigation found former director Auon’tai Anderson flirted online with a teenage student and made intimidating social media posts.
Wednesday’s meeting was the second time in 10 months that school board members have publicly scolded Youngquist for his behavior toward staff. While recent DPS boards have become known for infighting in recent years, they rarely air grievances openly as they did during the meeting.
“This is concerning repetitive behavior that may or may not change,” board member Xóchitl Gaytán said of the investigation’s findings. “I’m still working through the findings of the report. Thinking about how I want to deconstruct the white privilege that I read in it and how it is playing out.”
Staff, most of whom are people of color, told investigators that Youngquist cuts them off in conversations, has refused to shake hands and declines to meet with them. Employees said Youngquist questions them to such an extent that it appears the director believes they are lying or incapable of doing their jobs, according to the report.
“We conclude it is more likely than not that Mr. Youngquist exhibited bias in interactions with some district leaders of color,” investigators wrote in their findings.
Director Michelle Quattlebaum, right, speaks during a special Denver Public Schools board meeting to discuss a third-party investigation into Superintendent Alex Marrero’s allegations against Director John Youngquist, in Denver on Oct. 29, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
In his statement to the board, Youngquist, a white man, emphasized the investigation did not determine his behavior was driven by overt racism — even as it also found that his actions were the result of biases, including when interacting with employees of color.
“I hold biases as each and every one of us,” Youngquist said. “Our biases may or may not be represented in our behavior.”
Youngquist’s comments fell short of the accountability that several of his colleagues said they were seeking from him, and spurred board member Michelle Quattlebaum, who is Black, to tears.
“I am heartbroken,” she said. “I have experienced racism, discrimination and oppression almost every single day of my life. Mr. Youngquist, as I listen to your statement, my heart broke.”
“What breaks my heart is that I didn’t hear accountability,” Quattlebaum added.
Gaytán and Marlene De La Rosa — the other two directors of color on the board — pressed Youngquist on what they also said was a lack of accountability in his statement.
“I feel disappointed,” De La Rosa told Youngquist. “…I thought I knew you to be a different person than that. If we don’t take accountability when we do things that harm people, that hurts their feelings, that make them feel a certain way, we cannot move forward to reach our goals as a collective board.”
Youngquist responded by saying that he has previously reached out individually to district staffers whom he has offended. “Blanket level of accountability is not something that makes sense to me,” he said.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Wednesday approved energy company Enbridge’s plans to encase a segment of an aging oil pipeline that runs beneath a Great Lakes channel, pushing past its own findings that construction could ruin the environmentally sensitive area.
The corps initially planned to issue a permitting decision early next year. The agency fast-tracked the project in April after President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to identify energy projects for expedited emergency permitting.
“The approval of the Enbridge Line 5 reroute application is a great success and will advance the President’s energy dominance agenda for America,” Adam Telle, assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, said in a statement.
The corps released an environmental analysis in May that concluded tunnel construction would protect the pipeline but the work could destroy wetlands and archeological sites, harm bat habitats, disturb aquatic life, mar lake vistas and potentially trigger an underwater explosion.
The corps still issued Enbridge a permit, saying Wednesday that the application complied with all applicable federal laws and regulations.
Calgary, Alberta-based Enbridge did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Enbridge now needs only a permit from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy to begin the $500 million-plus project. Environmentalists have been pressuring the state to deny the application.
Enbridge has been using the Line 5 pipeline to transport crude oil and natural gas liquids between Superior, Wisconsin, and Sarnia, Ontario, since 1953. Roughly 4 miles (6 kilometers) of the pipeline runs along the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac, a channel linking Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.
Concerns about the segment rupturing and causing a catastrophic spill have been growing since 2017, when Enbridge officials revealed that engineers had known about gaps in the segment’s coating for three years. A boat anchor damaged the line in 2018, further stoking fears.
Enbridge officials maintain the segment is structurally sound. Still, they reached a deal with then-Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration in 2018 calling for the company to build a protective tunnel around the segment.
Conservationists and a number of Native American tribes have balked at the proposal, calling it too risky and demanding Enbridge simply shut down the pipeline. The project has become entangled in multiple lawsuits.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, sued in 2019 seeking to void the easement that allows Enbridge to operate the pipeline in the straits. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently weighing whether the case belongs in federal or state court.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, ordered her regulators in 2020 to revoke the easement allowing the segment to operate in the straits. Enbridge filed a federal lawsuit that same year seeking to invalidate the order. Trump has inserted himself into that dispute, too. His administration filed briefs in September arguing Whitmer interfered with U.S. foreign policy when she revoked the easements.
The Michigan Public Service Commission issued permits in 2023, prompting another lawsuit from environmental groups and tribes. A Michigan appeals court upheld the permits this past February.
AP reporter Steve Karnowski contributed to this story.
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CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned a landmark decision in West Virginia that had rejected attempts by an opioid-ravaged area to be compensated by U.S. drug distributors for a influx of prescription pain pills into the region.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, ruled that a lower court judge erred when he said West Virginia’s public nuisance law did not apply to the lawsuit involving the distribution of opioids.
“West Virginia law permits abatement of a public nuisance to include a requirement that a defendant pay money to fund efforts to eliminate the resulting harm to the public,” the 4th Circuit wrote. “West Virginia has long characterized abatement as an equitable remedy.”
The ruling sends the case back to U.S. District Court in Charleston for “further proceedings consistent with the principles expressed in this opinion.”
Thousands of state and local governments have sued over the toll of opioids. The suits relied heavily on claims that the companies created a public nuisance by failing to monitor where the powerful prescriptions were ending up. Most of the lawsuits were settled as part of a series of nationwide deals that could be worth more than $50 billion. But there wasn’t a decisive trend in the outcomes of those that have gone to trial.
In July 2022, U.S. District Judge David Faber ruled in favor of three major U.S. drug distributors who were accused by Cabell County and the city of Huntington of causing a public health crisis by distributing 81 million pills over eight years in the county. AmerisourceBergen Drug Co., Cardinal Health Inc. and McKesson Corp. also were accused of ignoring the signs that Cabell County was being ravaged by addiction.
Faber said West Virginia’s Supreme Court had only applied public nuisance law in the context of conduct that interferes with public property or resources. He said to extend the law to cover the marketing and sale of opioids “is inconsistent with the history and traditional notions of nuisance.”
Last year the federal appeals court sent a certified question to the state Supreme Court, which states: “Under West Virginia’s common law, can conditions caused by the distribution of a controlled substance constitute a public nuisance and, if so, what are the elements of such a public nuisance claim?”
The state justices declined to answer. That 3-2 opinion in May returned the case to the federal appears court.
“We hold that West Virginia’s highest court would not exclude as a matter of law any common law claim for public nuisance caused by the distribution of a controlled substance,” the 4th Circuit wrote Tuesday. “Therefore, we necessarily conclude that the district court erred when it held that a public nuisance claim based on the distribution of opioids was per se legally insufficient under West Virginia law.”
During arguments earlier this year before the state Supreme Court over the certified question, Steve Ruby, an attorney for the companies, called “radical” the plaintiffs’ arguments to extend the public nuisance law to opioid manufacturers. If allowed, he said, that would “create an avalanche of activist litigation.”
The appeals court previously noted that the West Virginia Mass Litigation Panel, which works to resolve complex cases in state court, has concluded in several instances that opioid distribution “can form the basis of a public nuisance claim under West Virginia common law.”
In his 2022 decision, Faber also said the plaintiffs offered no evidence that the defendants distributed controlled substances to any entity that didn’t hold a proper registration from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration or the state Board of Pharmacy. The defendants also had suspicious monitoring systems in place as required by the Controlled Substances Act, he said.
But the 4th Circuit Court found Tuesday that the lower court “misconstrued the distributors’ duties” under the Controlled Substances Act.
In 2021 in Cabell County, an Ohio River county of 93,000 residents, there were 1,059 emergency responses to suspected overdoses — significantly higher than each of the previous three years — with at least 162 deaths.
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Two decades after a Republican-controlled Congress gave gun manufacturers immunity from being sued over crimes committed with their firearms, blue state Democrats upset about gun violence think they’ve found a way to penetrate that legal shield.
Since 2021, 10 states have passed laws intended to make it easier to sue gunmakers and sellers.
The newest such law, in Connecticut, took effect this month. It opens firearms manufacturers and retailers up to lawsuits if they don’t take steps to prevent guns from getting into the hands of people banned from owning them, or who should be suspected of intending to use them to hurt themselves or others. Other states have allowed lawsuits against companies deemed to have created a “public nuisance” through the sale or marketing of firearms.
The legislation — and flurry of lawsuits against gun companies that followed — has outraged gun rights advocates, who accuse the states of trying to skirt the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
That law, which blocked a wave of similar lawsuits two decades ago, says gun companies operating legally cannot be held liable for violent acts committed by people misusing weapons.
“They know these laws are unconstitutional. They know these laws violate the PLCAA,” said Lawrence G. Keane, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the National Shooting Sports Foundation. “They don’t care,” he said, adding that the real goal of the lawsuits was to harass the industry and drain it financially.
Gun control groups say the states have simply set clearer requirements for gun companies to ensure their products aren’t sold or used illegally.
“These laws don’t just open the courthouse doors to survivors. They also force the gun industry to operate more responsibly and, most importantly, can help prevent future tragedies,” said Po Murray, chair of the Newtown Action Alliance, a gun-violence prevention group founded after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
Two decades of federal immunity
Congress adopted protections for the gun industry after lawsuits filed in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere attempted to hold the firearms industry responsible for violent crime.
Many of those suits argued that gun companies had knowingly oversupplied certain markets with cheap handguns and ignored signs that those weapons were being trafficked to places with strict gun controls.
The firearms industry and the National Rifle Association saw the lawsuits as unfair. As long as gun companies weren’t breaking rules around sales, they shouldn’t be held responsible for violence, they said.
President George W. Bush, a Republican, agreed and signed the shield law in 2005, saying it helped stem “frivolous lawsuits.”
“Our laws should punish criminals who use guns to commit crimes, not law-abiding manufacturers of lawful products,” Bush said at the time.
The legal protections Congress gave the gun industry aren’t absolute.
For example, a gunmaker that sells a faulty firearm can still be sued over dangerous defects. Another exception allows lawsuits against companies that knowingly violate laws regulating how firearms are sold and marketed.
When Congress drafted that exception, it cited the example of a shop that knowingly sold a gun to someone banned from owning one, such as a convicted felon.
The new state laws have sought to expand potential liability for gun companies by creating new rules for the industry. New York passed a law in 2021 requiring gun companies to create controls to prevent unlawful possession or use of their products. It also says they cannot knowingly or recklessly “contribute to a condition” that endangers public safety.
“Any business operating in New York must adhere to our laws — and if they don’t, they are held accountable,” said Democratic state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, the law’s chief proponent.
Many of the new laws follow legal theories from a lawsuit filed against gunmaker Remington by families of Sandy Hook victims. The suit, which was settled for $73 million in 2022, argued that Remington’s marketing violated state consumer protection law.
It’s too soon to say if courts will uphold the new state laws.
A panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in July that New York’s law wasn’t expressly barred by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, but that decision is not expected to be the last word. One of the judges, Dennis Jacobs, made it clear he believes the law is vulnerable to future legal challenges, calling it “nothing short of an attempt to end-run PLCAA.”
The U.S. Supreme Court, which is controlled 6-3 by Republican-nominated justices, hasn’t yet considered the state liability laws, but the gun industry was encouraged when the justices unanimously agreed in June to toss out a $10 billion lawsuit Mexico filed against top firearms manufacturers claiming their business practices fuel cartel violence.
Justice Elena Kagan, a Democratic nominee, wrote in her opinion how Congress passed PLCAA to halt lawsuits similar to the one filed by Mexico. She said Mexico had made no plausible argument that the companies knowingly helped gun trafficking.
“The Court doubts Congress intended to draft such a capacious way out of PLCAA, and in fact it did not,” she wrote.
Associated Press Writer Dave Collins contributed to this report.
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