Verizon and Coinbase caused the theft of $452,000 belonging to a Verizon customer following a SIM swap at a Verizon Wireless store in Indianapolis, alleged plaintiff Bryan Volz’s complaint Wednesday (docket 1:24-cv-01416) in U.S. District Court for Maryland in Baltimore.

When a district court finds that a lawsuit involves an arbitrable dispute, and a party requests a stay pending arbitration, Section 3 of the Federal Arbitration Act compels that court to stay the proceeding rather than dismissing it, said the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion Thursday (docket 22-1218) in Smith v. Spizzirri, delivered by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Montana’s Age Verification Act, SB-544, violates the First and 14th amendments and “burdens interstate commerce,” said the Free Speech Coalition and seven plaintiff website operators and content providers in a complaint Tuesday (docket 9:24-cv-00067) against Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen (R) in U.S. District Court for Montana in Missoula.

Incorporation by reference “is a longstanding practice that allows an agency to refer, in the text of a published rule, to material available elsewhere instead of republishing that material in the rule itself,” the FCC’s respondent brief said. It was filed Monday (docket 23-1311) in the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit. It opposes the petition for review challenging the agency's RF equipment testing order.

All three 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges hearing oral argument Wednesday on Gray Television’s appeal of a $518,000 FCC forfeiture order seemed skeptical of the agency’s rationale for the penalty amount but split on Gray’s arguments against the FCC’s authority over deals for TV station network affiliation.

All parties in the consolidated district court case that challenges Montana’s statewide TikTok ban seek to stay those proceedings pending the “final adjudication” of TikTok’s constitutional challenge to the federal TikTok ban that's embedded in the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, said their joint motion Tuesday (docket 9:23-cv-00061) in U.S. District Court for Montana in Missoula. TikTok and parent ByteDance filed the constitutional challenge May 7 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (see 2405070045).

Amazon's "anti-competitive and monopolistic practices" have artificially inflated prices for Arizona consumers and harmed smaller third-party retailers that rely on its platform, said Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) in a news release Wednesday in which she announced two lawsuits against Amazon in Maricopa County Superior Court for violations of Arizona consumer fraud and antitrust laws.

Trinity Broadcasting Network knowingly disclosed Leah Smith's personally identifiable information (PII) to Meta, said her March 18 Video Privacy Protection Act class action in California Superior Court for Orange County, removed Tuesday to U.S. District Court for Central California (docket 2:24-cv-04030).

The district court properly denied plaintiff-appellant Donald Nicodemus’ motion for injunctive relief to block Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) from enforcing HB-1186, the state’s “buffer law,” said Rokita’s appellee brief Friday (docket 24-1099) in the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Here are Communications Litigation Today's top stories from last week, in case you missed them. Each can be found by searching on its title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.