Intel adds retired Intel executive Stacy Smith, now Kioxia executive chairman, to its board ... TE Connectivity elects Carol Davidson chairman, succeeding John Lynch, retired ... Lumina AI, machine learning and AI company, adds former Microsoft government affairs executive Ed Ingle to its board ... ZMC, private equity firm focused on media, communications, entertainment and tech sectors, promotes Director-Finance Anastasia Marras to chief financial officer ... Transcend, data privacy and governance platform, hires former Grindr Chief Privacy Officer Ron De Jesus as its first field chief privacy officer ... FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announces additions to the Bureau of Media Relations: Raven Hill, from the Maryland Department of Education, as co-deputy director; Becky Lockhart, from the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau; Laura Nichols, ex-Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, as digital director; and Jason Schiavoni, ex-Smithsonian Institution, as website/digital experience director; and the retirements of David Wright from the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau; Wayne Liang, from the Enforcement Bureau; Vanessa Lamb from the Office of Managing Director; and Hillary Burchuk from the Office of Inspector General.
The FCC’s March 7 response opposing Essential Network Technologies and MetComm.net's Feb. 26 emergency motion to expedite consideration of the companies' E-rate program appeal “confirms that the motion should be granted,” according to the petitioners’ reply Wednesday (docket 24-1027) at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Twenty industry and business groups, including CTIA, USTelecom and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, seek expedited briefing and oral argument on their consolidated petitions for review challenging the lawfulness of the FCC’s Nov. 20 digital discrimination order (see 2402290002), said their motion Wednesday (docket 24-1183) in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell for Western North Carolina in Statesville denied InvestorPlace Media’s Sept. 27 motion to dismiss plaintiff Courtney Hill’s amended Telephone Consumer Protection Act complaint, said Bell’s signed order Monday (docket 5:23-cv-00111). Hill alleges that InvestorPlace, a financial research firm, violated the TCPA by sending her telemarketing text messages without her consent (see 2309280016). But InvestorPlace’s motion to dismiss contended that the text messages Hill allegedly received bore “no resemblance” to telemarketing, as the FCC has defined it. Hill alleges that most of the text messages she received contained a link that directs the viewer to a specific page of InvestorPlace’s website hosting a briefing or article. The rest simply urged the recipient to visit the InvestorPlace’s website for more details. Hill’s amended complaint doesn’t describe “with specificity” the web pages linked to the text messages she received, said the judge’s order. While the court finds that Hill has met her “limited burden” to plead a plausible TCPA claim, she “will of course be required to establish in discovery that the linked web pages reflect the commercial activity sufficient to satisfy the statutory definition of telemarketing,” it said. Hill can plausibly allege InvestorPlace’s text messages “meet the regulatory definition of telemarketing if their purpose was to promote a commercial transaction with the company,” it said. Though the text portion of the communications “may not directly encourage” Hill to purchase any services, her allegations assert that the embedded links “plausibly tell a different, more mercantile story,” it said. Hill has plausibly alleged that the text messages offering investment advice were a “pitch” meant to draw recipients to InvestorPlace’s website “where they presumably would be encouraged to purchase a subscription,” said the order. The court accordingly finds the text messages don’t merely provide informational content, “but instead plausibly direct the recipient to specific websites that provide free investment advice as a part of an effort to market the purchase of a subscription from InvestorPlace,” it said.
Petitioner Insurance Marketing Coalition's brief is due April 15, with respondent FCC's due 30 days later, said a briefing notice Tuesday (docket 24-10277) in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The coalition’s optional reply brief is due 21 days after the service of the commission’s brief, it said. The coalition’s petition for review asks the 11th Circuit to vacate the FCC’s Dec. 18 order implementing rules under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act to target and eliminate illegal robotexts (see 2312220059). The coalition alleges the order exceeds the FCC’s statutory authority and was adopted “without observance of procedure required by law.” The order imposes several measures, including codifying that the national do not call registry’s protections apply to unlawful text messages.
American Tower, AT&T and T-Mobile “could easily and with minimal cost” take action to modify their facilities to end plaintiff Marcia Haller’s “debilitating symptoms” while allowing her to still use their telecommunications services, alleged Haller's Americans With Disabilities Act complaint Monday (docket 0:24-cv-00877) in U.S. District Court for Minnesota in Duluth.
Oral argument in Gray Television’s petition for review against the FCC is scheduled for May 15 in Birmingham, said an 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals calendar Friday (docket 22-14274). Argument time is 15 minutes for each side, it said. Gray’s petition argues that the agency’s authority over broadcast license transfers doesn’t apply to the company’s 2020 purchase of another broadcaster’s CBS network affiliate in Anchorage because no licenses were transferred (see 2309140058).
NAB filed a challenge Friday to the FCC's Dec. 26 quadrennial review order in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, joining a number of similar challenges filed in other circuits (see 2402250001). The cases are all to be consolidated in the 8th Circuit under the order of the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (see 2403050075). The FCC failed to meet its statutory obligation to review ownership rules every four years, exceeded its authority by tightening rules rather than relaxing them, and violated the First Amendment by limiting stations from airing multiple top-four networks on multicast channels, alleged NAB in its petition for review (docket 24-1055). The new rules are content-based restrictions on television stations outside the FCC's authority, said the petition. The FCC also ignored the will of Congress and violated the Administrative Procedure Act by not considering evidence in the record on competition faced by broadcasters. “The record shows that advertisers are increasingly diverting resources away from local radio and television stations in favor of digital promotions,” the petition said. “But the Quadrennial Order disregards these bedrock changes in the media and advertising landscape.” The court should vacate and set aside the order, NAB said.
It’s unconstitutional for Washington state to tax federal Lifeline reimbursements, the Washington Supreme Court unanimously decided Thursday. Siding with T-Mobile subsidiary Assurance Wireless, the state’s high court reversed a lower court’s opinion because it found that the Universal Service Administrative Co. (USAC) is the FCC’s instrumentality and thus immune from state taxes.
U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg for Northern Georgia in Atlanta ordered Roswell, Georgia, to "proceed expeditiously" in its search for a replacement expert witness after its original expert resigned abruptly from the case days before he was to testify at this week’s evidentiary hearing, said Totenberg’s signed order Monday (docket 1:10-cv-01464). Ronald Graiff had been Roswell’s expert witness on the case against T-Mobile since 2017, but he told the city Friday that his role was causing him too much stress and taking a toll on his physical and mental health, said a declaration Monday from the city’s counsel. Searching for a replacement expert as soon as possible “in Georgia and elsewhere” was necessary to comply with the “relevant disclosure rules,” and to allow plaintiff T-Mobile “a sufficient opportunity to depose the replacement,” said the order. The judge ruled in March that the FCC’s September 2018 small-cells declaratory ruling preempting aspects of local and municipal cell tower permit reviews is a “substantive rule” that shouldn’t be applied retroactively to Roswell’s 2017 denial of T-Mobile’s application to build a tower in a residential neighborhood (see 2303210036).