Meta Files Lawsuit Arguing FTC’s In-House Courts are Unconstitutional

Meta wants to put the system on trial.

In the latest chapter of an ongoing legal fight between Zuckerberg’s empire and the Federal Trade Commission, Meta filed a lawsuit against the agency arguing its in-house trials are unconstitutional. Add it to the growing list of corporations pushing back on the legitimacy of US regulatory bodies.

A Few Good Metas

Way back in 2020, the FTC and then-Facebook agreed to a $5 billion settlement following an investigation into the social platform’s laissez-faire approach to protecting user privacy. The FTC effectively reopened the case this past May, arguing that Meta repeatedly violated guarantees it had made in the agreement, and proposed a handful of new privacy restrictions, including a blanket ban on monetizing user data derived from minors. (The 2020 agreement itself came after the FTC found that Facebook had violated privacy policies from a previous agreement with the agency in 2012).

On Monday, a US district judge ruled the FTC could move forward with its push to revise the 2020 agreement. In response, Meta filed a lawsuit late Wednesday with a Washington federal court to halt the FTC’s proceedings, arguing that the agency is operating as “prosecutor, judge, and jury in the same case” because of its in-house court system that violates the company’s right to due process.

It’s similar to arguments already being made by other corporations:

• Earlier this year, gene-sequencing biotech giant Illumina scored a fast-track appeal of an FTC order to unwind its $7 billion acquisition of cancer detection startup Grail. Some see the case, currently being heard in the 5th Circuit Court, potentially going all the way to the Supreme Court — which could ultimately rule to blunt the FTC’s authority.
• On Wednesday, Elon Musk and Mark Cuban-backed hedge-fund manager George Jarkesy testified in front of the Supreme Court arguing that the Security Exchange Commission’s reliance on in-house courts with no peer jury is also unconstitutional — an adverse ruling for the SEC could also ultimately blunt its authority.

Antibluster: Of course, where some see a bold stance against federal overreach, others see the type of anti-antitrust bluster typical of massive corporations. “Meta’s lawsuit is a baseless attack on the FTC’s authority, granted to it by Congress,” Katherine Van Dyck, senior counsel at the anti-monopoly nonprofit the American Economic Liberties Project, wrote in a statement. “The Commission was established over a century ago to protect consumers from predatory, unfair, and anticompetitive businesses that erode our democracy when left unchecked.”