Order blocking state AG's investigation of Google is vacated by 5th Circuit
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A federal appeals court has vacated an injunction that blocked Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood from investigating Google’s alleged failure to combat illegal and harmful activity on the Internet.
The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled (PDF) on Friday, report the Recorder (sub. req.), Courthouse News Service, Bloomberg News, Ars Technica and the Hollywood Reporter. The overturned injunction would have blocked Hood from enforcing a 79-page administrative subpoena against Google and from bringing civil or criminal charges against the company based on third-party content it makes available.
The appeals court said the injunction “covers a fuzzily defined range of enforcement actions that do not appear imminent.” The subpoena isn’t ripe for review until Google refuses to comply with it, and Hood seeks to enforce it, the appeals court said. The court also said the bar on criminal and civil action was premature.
Hood had expressed concern that children were able to purchase drugs without a prescription through Google searches, and consumers were able to buy counterfeit and pirated goods. He had also asked Google to remove entire websites substantially devoted to intellectual property infringement from its search index and to warn users before allowing them to link to “rogue sites.”
Google filed suit in federal court and sought the injunction, claiming it was protected by the Constitution and the Communications Decency Act, which protects Internet service providers from claims stemming from publication of information created by third parties. Google also maintained that Hood was doing the work of “anti-Google special interests,” including the Motion Picture Association of America and Microsoft Corp., and sought documents from law firms representing those groups.
The appeals court said it wasn’t expressing an opinion on the merits of Google’s claims. In a footnote, the appeals court said it wasn’t suggesting that Google the Communications Decency Act wouldn’t protect Google at a later stage of the litigation. “And we will of course not presume that Mississippi courts would be insensitive to the First Amendment values that can be implicated by investigatory subpoenas,” the court said in another footnote.
