AT&T moved the U.S. District Court for Middle Florida in Orlando to compel the SIM swap claims of plaintiff Al Weiss to arbitration and to stay the case pending the completion of arbitration, said its motion to compel Monday (docket 6:23-cv-00120).

The Walker family plaintiffs’ Feb. 28 opposition to the cellphone industry’s motion to dismiss their RF radiation complaint (see 2303010001) confirms that federal conflict preemption bars their claims, said the industry’s reply Tuesday (docket 2:21-cv-00923) in U.S. District Court for Western Louisiana in Lake Charles. Their claims are barred because they challenge the FCC’s RF emissions standards and equipment authorization "regime” in defiance of federal statutes, said the reply.

The Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri, plus the private plaintiffs in the social media censorship lawsuit against the Biden administration, seek leave to amend their complaint to add class allegations and to certify a class, said their motion Monday (docket 3:22-cv-01213) in U.S. District Court for Western Louisiana in Monroe. The defendants oppose the motion, it said.

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.

By installing the Facebook Pixel code on its website, healthcare company Aspirus “effectively planted a bug” on plaintiff “John Doe’s” web browsers and forced him and other class members to “unknowingly disclose their private, sensitive and confidential health-related communications” with Aspirus to Facebook, alleged a Friday class action (docket 3:23-cv-00171) in U.S. District Court for Western Wisconsin in Madison.

The four causes of action plaintiff George Schwarz seeks to assert against Nissan North America arising from his loss of connected vehicle services through obsolete telematics equipment in his Nissan vehicles should be resolved through individual arbitration, said the automaker. Nissan filed a motion Monday (docket 3:22-cv-00933) in U.S. District Court for Middle Tennessee in Nashville to dismiss Schwarz's complaint, or in the alternative, to stay the proceedings and compel the dispute to arbitration.

The FCC’s September 2018 small-cells declaratory ruling preempting aspects of local and municipal cell tower permit reviews (see 2210070046) is a “substantive rule” that shouldn’t be applied retroactively to the 2017 Roswell, Georgia, decision denying T-Mobile’s application to build a tower in a residential neighborhood, said U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg for Northern Georgia in Atlanta in a signed opinion and order Friday (docket 1:10-cv-01464).

U.S. District Judge Michael Brown for Northern Georgia in Atlanta denied the PBS motion to dismiss plaintiff Jazmine Harris’ class action for failure to state a Video Privacy Protection Act claim, said his signed order Monday (docket 1:22-cv-02456). Harris alleges PBS disclosed her PBS.org personal viewing information to Facebook without her consent, in violation of the VPPA. Her proposed class includes all PBS.org subscribers who had their personal viewing information disclosed to Facebook.

Meta seeks the dismissal of a Jan. 27 complaint alleging it’s engaging in “viewpoint discrimination” against two private Facebook groups, called Wise Guys I and Wise Guys II, in violation of the First Amendment and the Texas social media law HB 20 (see 2301300023), said Meta’s motion Monday (docket 3:23-cv-00217) in U.S. District Court for Northern Texas in Dallas.

U.S. District Judge Robert Payne seemed open multiple times in oral argument Monday to deciding U.S. Bankruptcy Court erred in dismissing SES claims against Intelsat over the collapse of the C-Band Alliance (CBA) (see 2210030050). Oral argument before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Richmond (docket 3:22-cv-668) lasted nearly four hours. Payne said he might require additional briefing.