Court sides with Facebook in text message dispute
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court last Thursday sided with Facebook in a lawsuit over unwanted text notifications it sent, rejecting a claim that the messages violated the federal ban on robocalls.
The high court's ruling for the Menlo Park, California-based social media giant was unanimous.
Democratic lawmakers and consumer groups said the court opened a gaping hole in the law, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, that would subject anyone with a cellphone to endless automated calls and messages.
The case was brought by a man who received text messages from Facebook notifying him that an attempt had been made to log in to his account from a new device or browser. The man, Noah Duguid, said he never had a Facebook account and never gave Facebook his phone number. When he was unable to stop the notifications, he filed a class action lawsuit.
The 1991 consumer law bars abusive telemarketing practices. The law restricts calls made using an "automatic telephone dialing system," a device that can "store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator" and then call that number.
The question for the court was whether the law covers equipment that can store and dial telephone numbers even if the equipment does not use a random or sequential number generator.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the court that it does not.
Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said in an emailed statement, "As the Court recognized, the law's provisions were never intended to prohibit companies from sending targeted security notifications and the court's decision will allow companies to continue working to keep the accounts of their users safe."
But Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., said in a joint statement that the court ignored Congress' intent when it passed the law and now will allow "companies the ability to assault the public with a non-stop wave of unwanted calls and texts, around the clock."
The lawmakers said they would introduce legislation to expressly prohibit Facebook's practice.
"If the Justices find their private mobile phones ringing non-stop from now until our legislation becomes law, they'll only have themselves to blame," Markey and Eshoo said.
Facebook had argued the lawsuit should be dismissed because Duguid had not claimed Facebook was sending messages that were randomly generated. Facebook said it sends targeted, individualized texts to numbers linked to specific accounts. A trial court agreed, but an appeals court reversed that decision.
Facebook said it was possible Duguid's cellphone number previously belonged to a Facebook user who opted to receive login notifications.
The case is Facebook v. Duguid, 19-511.
Georgia gets win in water war with Florida
By Mark Sherman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court unanimously dismissed Florida's water lawsuit against Georgia last Thursday, ending the long-running legal fight between the two states.
The court rejected Florida's claim that Georgia uses too much of the water that flows from the Atlanta suburbs to the Gulf of Mexico. Florida said its neighbor's overconsumption is to blame for the decimation of Florida's oyster industry.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the court that Florida failed to prove its case, which had been before the court twice in the past three years.
"Considering the record as a whole, Florida has not shown that it is 'highly probable' that Georgia's alleged overconsumption played more than a trivial role in the collapse of Florida's oyster fisheries," Barrett wrote.
The court's newest justice cautioned that she and her colleagues were not equipped to say what accounts for the steep decline in oysters from Apalachicola Bay.
"Of course, the precise causes of the Bay's oyster collapse remain a subject of ongoing scientific debate. As judges, we lack the expertise to settle that debate and do not purport to do so here," Barrett wrote.
She also noted that, even with its high-court victory, "Georgia has an obligation to make reasonable use of Basin waters in order to help conserve that increasingly scarce resource."
Georgia officials called the decision a vindication of their water management.
"Today the Supreme Court of the United States, in a unanimous decision, affirmed what we have long known to be true: Georgia's water use has been fair and reasonable," Attorney General Chris Carr said.
In a statement, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection said officials there were disappointed and in the process of reviewing the ruling. The statement noted that the court's opinion says Georgia has an obligation to help conserve water. The department said Florida "will be evaluating all available options to ensure Georgia fulfills this obligation."
The case involved the Flint and Chattahoochee rivers in Georgia, which join to form the Apalachicola River at the Florida line.
Florida had sought a court order forcing Georgia to limit its use of water from the Flint. When the justices first heard the dispute three years ago, Florida also was claiming that the Atlanta area's consumption of water from the Chattahoochee River played a big role in the reduced flows in Florida, but that claim fell out of the case by the time it reached the court again in February.
Last year, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission voted unanimously to shut down oyster harvesting in Apalachicola Bay through the end of 2025 because of a dwindling oyster population.
Florida's lawsuit against Georgia was filed in 2013 directly in the Supreme Court, which is mainly an appellate court but hears disputes between states. The court appointed a special master to evaluate the case, and he initially recommended that Georgia should prevail.
Justices uphold FCC's easing of local media ownership limits
By Mark Sherman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court last Thursday unanimously upheld federal regulators' decision to ease ownership limits on local media, rejecting a claim that the change would hurt minority and female ownership.
The court said the Federal Communications Commission acted reasonably in 2017 when it modified rules that predated the internet.
The old rules prohibited a single entity from owning a radio or TV station and a daily newspaper in the same media market. They also limited how many radio and TV stations one company could own in a single market and restricted the number of TV stations a company could operate in one media market.
"The FCC considered the record evidence on competition, localism, viewpoint diversity, and minority and female ownership, and reasonably concluded that the three ownership rules no longer serve the public interest," Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the court.
The decision comes as newspaper and broadcasting industries say they need the changes to deal with growing competition from the internet and cable companies.
The FCC adopted the changes on a party-line, 3-2 vote, with three Republican-appointed commissioners in the majority. The dissenting Democratic appointees and other critics said the changes would encourage consolidation and hurt diversity.
Republicans have long sought changes to the media-ownership rules. The FCC in 2017, then-run by a Republican chairman, decided that since the internet has so changed media, allowing more consolidation in newspapers and broadcasters would be good for consumers.
The FCC now has a Democratic chairwoman who dissented from the 2017 order. But it is not yet fully staffed to let it take on controversial measures.
Acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said she was "disappointed" in the court's decision.
Advocacy groups that oppose the growing consolidation of the industry called on the FCC, the Biden administration and Congress to develop new rules to encourage local, diverse ownership.
"I wouldn't be surprised if this decision opens the floodgates to more consolidation for media conglomerates. But that doesn't mean the FCC has to approve every merger that comes knocking on its door," said Yosef Getachew, Media & Democracy Program Director for Common Cause.
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had blocked FCC efforts to change the rules for the past 17 years. The Philadelphia-based court's latest ruling, in 2019, prompted the FCC's appeal to the Supreme Court.
The FCC is supposed to review media-ownership rules every four years, according to a 1996 law.
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Associated Press writer Tali Arbel contributed to this report from Phoenix.
