Decisions and Verdicts

Subterms

    More stories

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      U.S. Asks Judge to Break Up Google

      by

      The Justice Department said that the best way to address the tech company’s monopoly in internet search was to force it to sell Chrome, among other measures.The Justice Department said on Monday that the best way to address Google’s monopoly in internet search was to break up the $1.81 trillion company, kicking off a three-week hearing that could reshape the technology giant and alter the power players in Silicon Valley.Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in August that Google had broken antitrust laws to maintain its dominance in online search. He is now hearing arguments from the government and the company over how to best fix Google’s monopoly and is expected to order those measures, referred to as “remedies,” by the end of the summer.In an opening statement in the hearing on Monday, the government said Judge Mehta should force Google to sell its popular Chrome web browser, which drives users to its search engine. Government lawyers also said the company should take steps to give competitors a leg up if the court wants to restore competition to the moribund market for online search.“Your honor, we are not here for a Pyrrhic victory,” David Dahlquist, a Justice Department lawyer, said in his opening statement. “This is the time for the court to tell Google and all other monopolists who are out there listening, and they are listening, that there are consequences when you break the antitrust laws.”The outcome in the case, U.S. v. Google, could drastically change the Silicon Valley behemoth. Google faces mounting challenges, including a breakup of its ad technology business after a different federal judge ruled last week that the company held a monopoly over some of the tools that websites use to sell open ad space. In 2023, Google also lost an antitrust suit brought by the maker of the video game Fortnite, which accused the tech giant of violating competition laws with its Play app store.The legal troubles could hurt Google as it battles OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta to lead a new era of artificial intelligence. Google has increasingly woven A.I. into its search. But the Justice Department has told Judge Mehta he should make sure Google cannot parlay its search monopoly into similar dominance in A.I.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      An Urgent Supreme Court Order Protecting Migrants Was Built for Speed

      by

      There are sculptures of tortoises scattered around the Supreme Court grounds. They symbolize, the court’s website says, “the slow and steady pace of justice.”But the court can move fast when it wants to, busting through protocols and conventions. It did so around 1 a.m. on Saturday, blocking the Trump administration from deporting a group of Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members under a rarely invoked 18th-century wartime law.The court’s unsigned, one-paragraph order was extraordinary in many ways. Perhaps most important, it indicated a deep skepticism about whether the administration could be trusted to live up to the key part of an earlier ruling after the government had deported a different group of migrants to a prison in El Salvador.That unsigned and apparently unanimous ruling, issued April 7, said that detainees were entitled to be notified if the government intended to deport them under the law, “within a reasonable time,” and in a way that would allow the deportees to challenge the move in court before their removal.There were indications late Friday that the administration was poised to violate both the spirit and letter of that ruling. Lawyers for the detainees said their clients were given notices that they were eligible to be deported under the law, the Alien Enemies Act. The notices were written in English, a language many of them do not speak, the lawyers said. And they provided no realistic opportunity to go to court.The American Civil Liberties Union, racing against the clock, filed its emergency application to the Supreme Court on Friday evening — Good Friday, as it happened — and urged the court to take immediate action to protect the detainees as part of a proposed class action.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Appeals Court Pauses for Now Contempt Proposal by Trial Judge

      by

      A federal appeals court on Friday night put off for the moment a plan by a trial judge to open contempt proceedings to determine whether the Trump administration had violated an order he issued last month stopping flights of Venezuelan migrants from being sent to El Salvador under a powerful wartime statute.In a single-page order, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said that it was entering what is known as an administrative stay to give itself more time to consider the validity of the contempt proposal by the trial judge, James E. Boasberg.On Wednesday, Judge Boasberg, concerned that the White House had ignored his order to pause all deportation flights headed to El Salvador under the wartime law, known as the Alien Enemies Act, gave Trump officials a choice. He said they could provide the men who were sent without hearings to El Salvador the due process they had been denied or they could face a searching contempt investigation into who among them was responsible for having not complied with his directives.In court papers filed on Friday morning, lawyers for the Justice Department told the appeals court that neither option was acceptable. The lawyers accused Judge Boasberg of overstepping his authority by seeking, on the one hand, to tell the Trump administration how to conduct foreign policy and, on the other, to effectively try to assume the role of an investigating prosecutor.The appeals court made clear that it was not ruling on the merits of the Justice Department’s accusations. The panel simply wanted additional time to consider the complexities of Judge Boasberg’s plan.That plan, laid out in an order this week, suggested that the judge was trying to pin down who in the administration was behind what he called the “willful disregard” of his oral instructions issued during a hearing on March 15. Speaking from the bench that day, he said any deportation flights headed to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act needed to be halted at once and that any planes already in the air should turn around.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Wisconsin Supreme Court Says Governor’s 400-Year Edit Was Within Veto Authority

      by

      Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, used his veto power to increase school funding limits for four centuries longer than Republican lawmakers in the state had intended.The sentence, dull but clear, was buried 158 pages into Wisconsin’s budget.“For the limit for the 2023-24 school year and the 2024-25 school year,” the sentence read when it was passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature, “add $325” to the amount school districts could generate through property taxes for each student.But by the time Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, and his veto pen were finished, it said something else entirely: “For the limit for 2023-2425, add $325.”It was clever. Creative. Perhaps even a bit subversive, extending the increase four centuries longer than lawmakers intended. But was it legal?On Friday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court said yes. In a 4-to-3 ruling in a lawsuit challenging Mr. Evers’s use of his partial veto authority, the court’s liberal majority said the governor had acted legally. The three conservative justices on the court dissented.“We uphold the 2023 partial vetoes, and in doing so we are acutely aware that a 400-year modification is both significant and attention-grabbing,” Justice Jill J. Karofsky wrote in the majority opinion. “However, our Constitution does not limit the governor’s partial veto power based on how much or how little the partial vetoes change policy, even when that change is considerable.”The proposed state budget had outlined two years of revenue limit increases, for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years. By editing out the text in red, Mr. Evers allowed increases until 2425.State of WisconsinWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Google Makes History With Rapid-Fire Antitrust Losses

      by

      Within a year, two federal judges declared the tech giant a monopoly in search and ad technology. The tide may be turning for antitrust.Silicon Valley’s tech giants have long regarded antitrust scrutiny as an irritating cost of doing business. There will be investigations, filings, depositions and even lawsuits.Yet courts move slowly, while technology rushes ahead. Time works to the companies’ advantage, as the political winds shift and presidential administrations change. That dynamic often opens the door to light-touch settlements.But the stakes rose sharply for Google on Thursday, when a federal judge ruled that the company had acted to illegally to build a monopoly in some of its online advertising technology. In August, another federal judge found that Google had engaged in anticompetitive behavior to protect its monopoly in online search.Antitrust experts said two big antitrust wins for the government against a single company in such a short time appeared to have no precedent.“Two courts have reached similar conclusions in product markets that go to the heart of Google’s business,” said William Kovacic, a law professor at George Washington University and former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. “That has to be seen as a real threat.”The Google decisions are part of a wave of current antitrust cases challenging the power of the biggest tech companies. This week, the trial began in a suit by the F.T.C. claiming that Meta, formerly Facebook, cemented an illegal monopoly in social media through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Appeals Court Scales Back Freeze on Firing Consumer Bureau Employees

      by

      A federal appeals panel on Friday halted parts of a district court judge’s injunction blocking the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, allowing officials to move ahead with firing some agency employees.Russell T. Vought, the White House budget office director, was named the consumer bureau’s acting director in February and immediately began gutting the agency. He closed its headquarters and sought to terminate its lease, canceled contracts essential to the bureau’s operations, terminated hundreds of employees and sought to lay off nearly all of the rest.In a lawsuit brought by the bureau’s staff union and other parties, Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the Federal District Court in Washington froze those actions last month with an injunction to stop what she described as the administration’s “hurried effort to dismantle and disable the agency entirely.” The Justice Department appealed her ruling.A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously rejected the government’s request to strike down Judge Jackson’s injunction, but it stayed parts of her ruling while the government’s appeal progresses. Specifically, the appeals court said the agency’s leaders can send a “reduction in force” notice — the process through which the government conducts layoffs — to employees they have determined are not necessary to carry out the agency’s “statutory duties.”When Congress created the consumer bureau in 2011, it assigned the watchdog agency dozens of tasks and ordered it to staff certain positions, including offices to aid student loan borrowers, military service members and older Americans. Those mandated obligations have been at the heart of the legal fight over the agency, because the bureau is required to fulfill those duties unless Congress acts.Mr. Vought’s team fired more than 200 probationary and fixed-term employees, only to reinstate most of them, with back pay, on Judge Jackson’s orders. The appeals court cleared the way for some to be fired again. Agency leaders may terminate employees after “an individualized assessment” of their necessity for carrying out the agency’s statutory tasks, the ruling said.But the court left much of Judge Jackson’s order intact, including her mandates that agency leaders shall not delete or destroy most of the bureau’s records and data, and that employees must be given access to either physical office space or the tools needed to work remotely. The consumer bureau’s Washington headquarters has remained shuttered and off limits to workers since Mr. Vought’s arrival.The appeals court expedited the government’s appeal and scheduled oral arguments for May 16. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Judge Says One DOGE Member Can Access Sensitive Treasury Dept. Data

      by

      Nineteen state attorneys general had sued to block Elon Musk’s government efficiency team from accessing Treasury systems that include Americans’ bank account and Social Security information.A Manhattan federal judge ruled on Friday that one member of Elon Musk’s government efficiency program could have access to sensitive payment and data systems at the Treasury Department, as long as that person goes through appropriate training and files disclosures.The order by the judge, Jeannette A. Vargas, came nearly two months after she had ruled that Mr. Musk’s team, members of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, would be banished from the agency’s systems until the conclusion of a lawsuit that claims the group’s access is unlawful.Friday night’s order partly dissolves the earlier preliminary injunction by granting Ryan Wunderly, who was hired as a special adviser for information technology and modernization, access to the Treasury systems in dispute, Judge Vargas wrote.To gain the access, however, Mr. Wunderly will have to complete hands-on training “typically required of other Treasury employees granted commensurate access” and submit a financial disclosure report, the judge wrote.The case stems from a lawsuit filed in February by 19 state attorneys general, led by Letitia James of New York, who sued to block the Trump administration’s policy of allowing political appointees and “special government employees” who work with Mr. Musk to access the systems. The systems contain some of the country’s most sensitive information, including Americans’ bank account and Social Security data.The attorneys general argued that only career civil servants who have received training and security clearances should have access. The untrained members of Mr. Musk’s team should not have “unfettered access,” they said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Freed From Prison by Trump and Now Facing the Prospect of Going Back

      by

      At a hearing this week, witnesses described behavior by Jonathan Braun that could result in his being locked up again. In the early hours of Feb. 15, Jonathan Braun, a violent felon granted clemency by President Trump, was agitated.After getting into a heated argument with his wife and parents and kicking them out of his cavernous Long Island home, Mr. Braun knocked on the door of his live-in nanny under the pretext of retrieving his phone, which was charging in her room.What followed, according to the former nanny’s testimony on Friday, was a terrifying, degrading encounter. Mr. Braun, shirtless, entered the room, pulled her onto her bed and put her into a headlock, she said. Then he pushed her hand over his bare genitals as he groped her breasts, telling her he had always wanted to have intercourse with her.The nanny said she had wrested herself away from his grasp, escaped to her bathroom and locked herself in.Coming on the second day of a hearing that will determine whether Mr. Braun returns to federal prison, her testimony offered one of the most vivid depictions of the depraved behavior he is accused of engaging in. There were no defense witnesses.Mr. Trump commuted Mr. Braun’s 10-year sentence for drug trafficking at the end of his first term in office. The commutation came after Mr. Braun’s family used its close ties to the father of Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and a senior White House adviser at the time, to secure Mr. Braun’s release.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More