Meta's $17.1 Billion Reckoning and Supreme Court Showdowns

This is Amicus, a law review on the broadcast stations of civic media.

My name is Jim Santel, your host in this edition of Amicus, a law review.

As in past weeks, we're going to be talking again about the rule of law, the administration of justice and the operation of government in a number of different areas and delighted honor that you're spending some time in exploration of those issues with me this day.

Let's begin not with the Supreme Court, although we're going to be talking about some of the most recent activities of our highest court near the end of our podcast.

But rather, let's go apart from the Supreme Court to some other courts and some other arbitration processes around the country, including a federal court.

in Texas and one in Minnesota as well.

But let's begin with some major tech news that also intersects with the rule of law and the operation of the courts in America.

Metta on Wednesday of this past week has reached as they announced and they described a major, a huge landmark settlement with some 47 states that includes the District of Columbia and some U.S.

territories

which they agreed to pay a whopping $17.1 billion with a B, $17.1 billion in penalties, and also agreed to make some major changes to its products based upon a lawsuit that was pending and claims in that lawsuit that it had endangered children with its addictive social media platforms.

A lot of history here, a lot of background here, a lot of litigation going on around this major issue.

in what can only be regarded as a fairly dramatic resolution of this case.

The owner of Facebook and Instagram agreed to the financial penalties that it just described for violating what's being described as federal child privacy and state's consumer protection laws.

and the operation of metal also agreed to limit how long teenagers can spend on those platforms and also agreed to bands on features that sort of encourage and stoke mental health issues striking at the heart of the company's business of engagement for advertising now where does this come from well.

We may recall, we've talked a lot about this on this broadcast.

There have been lots of lawsuits over these particular issues.

And the focus of this particular case, again, according to the entities that have brought this lawsuit, is on kids, again, stopping notifications and alerts.

at night when they're in school, encouraging them to take breaks from social media, protecting them from what they describe as harmful features.

All of that represented by Colorado's Attorney General, who is at the forefront of this lawsuit.

His name is Paul Weiser, WISER.

The agreement that he and others entered into just this past week

frankly, exceeded what many people anticipated would come out of a trial.

And in fact, this particular settlement, huge though it is, ends what can only be regarded as a major federal trial that's going on in the United States District Court in the Northern District of California.

That's in Oakland.

And that was where California, and plenty of other states, Colorado, Kentucky, New Jersey, were seeking about $200 billion, $200 billion over again, these accusations in their silicon plant that Metta had harmed children.

The states filed this agreement on Wednesday.

And it is anticipated that the judge, who's presiding over this trial, presiding over the case, and her name is Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, is going to review it and then is expected to approve it, bringing to an end this trial that has been going on for a while.

And it is significant that in addition to this whopping settlement, described again in the Northern District of California just this past week, Metta also announced, almost contemporaneous with that, that it's settling a light case

with Texas for about $1 billion on similar allegations involving, once again, mistreatment, misengagement with young people.

The company, beyond that, however, still faces a whole lot of other litigation around the country, lawsuits brought by school districts, brought by individuals, and many of those are still on the court dockets around the country for the coming months.

The settlement undeniably is being watched by an awful lot of tech folks, a lot of obviously in the legal community as well, the justice community and plainly interests of families and students, educators alike, all of them focusing on the significance of this major decision to bring this lawsuit to an end, at least this one to an end, and also addressing what could be, what could be some attempts to

regulate the particular entities here based upon the alleged harms it has caused children.

The settlement, according to my calculations, undeniably one of the highest ever paid by a tech company, two states in our nation's history.

It is significant.

The full value of Metas Payout depends on whether some other social companies out there, social media companies, also settle with the states.

and agreed if they pay some similar financial penalties and product changes.

So a lot of this is dependent upon that and the specific amounts are dependent upon what happens in those other cases.

It is clear that META will initially pay about $12 billion and then an additional $5 billion if entities like Snap and TikTok and YouTube also settle with the states.

and agree to some financial penalties and some product changes.

According to Metta's chief legal officer, Plainly had to put his imprimatur on all of this.

This is what he said.

He said, Metta wants to ensure that teens have a safe and productive experience on our platforms.

And we have partnered with state attorneys general to set a new industry standard.

This framework you went on to say will work only if our peers join us.

He said, because teens more fluidly have access across dozens of apps and may need an industry-wide solution.

And as I indicated, this particular agreement also plays into other claims against Metta and TikTok, YouTube, and Snap, the owner of Snapshot.

States, schools, teenagers have filed thousands, quite literally thousands of lawsuits.

around the country against tech companies, accusing them of the same kinds of things, targeting young users with some product features that are addictive and supposedly, according to the allegations in the complaint, bringing them into behaviors that are inappropriate.

A separate federal case being heard in Oakland, which some states have also parked,

That's proceeding.

School districts, as I said, have also brought many cases around the country, accusing the companies of public nuisance in their pursuit of monies and profits from their operation.

You may recall that we reported previously, the way back in March, Metta and YouTube.

lost their first financial personal injury case.

There was a case in which the companies agreed in the end based upon a jury verdict to pay about $6 million in damages.

A Mexico judge almost at the same time ordered Meta to pay that month penalties, totaling about $1 billion in a case brought by the state attorney general there.

The lawsuit, of course, does come not only with financial penalties,

but also will contemplate some major changes in the way that Meta involves youth and young people in particular in its product, likely forcing Meta to make some major producer changes for all of its teen users.

Those might arguably include interrupting endless scrolling and imposing some two-hour daily limits on Instagram and Facebook.

That's how significant this resolution may well be.

and also likely to avoid some addictive use and sleep interruptions.

The company will likely be required to limit its usage between midnight and 6 a.m.

and silence notifications during school hours of 8 a.m.

to 3 p.m.

Also likely limit features that psychologists link to negative social comparisons such as beauty filters and telling the like button clicks.

Also arguably strengthen age verification tools

and parental controls.

We'll get back to that in connection with some of the Supreme Court did just this past week.

The changes obviously very significant in bringing not only an end to this particular lawsuit pending there, but also also bringing to an end these major claims of addiction coming out of social media and requiring once again that meta pay up to 17.1 billion with a B dollars in penalties and doing these other things.

that are going to change the landscape of the ways in which social media, meta in particular, arguably those other companies as well, interacts with young people in America.

That is a major, major event in American history, given our involvement with, with social media these days, and the presence, the multi-billion dollar presence of social media entities.

in our lives on a regular basis.

That major news coming out of california but hitting across the country as well.

Let's talk about something that happened just this past week also in a somewhat related way having to do with freedom of the press and particular employment rights of an opinion writer for the washington post.

Here's the headline the washington post is being ordered by an arbitrator to rehire an opinion columnist

Her name, as you may well know, is Karen Atia, A-T-T-I-A-H.

Karen Atia, she was fired back in September when she posted some social media posts about the assassination of Charlie Cook.

You may recall that very well, that event.

And the arbitrator in resolving the claims against her also required that the Washington Post not only rehire her

but compensate her with back pay.

So what is this all about?

Well, you may recall again from all of this that the event happened again at the time of the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk, and many of the responses of media and personal individual responses around the nation, not only to that assassination, but it was legacy in America.

And at the time, the Washington Post determined that the opinion piece that the opinion writer here, Karen Atia had authored, was inconsistent with its views, its positions that an opinion writer should post, specifically the Washington Post said in a termination letter to her that her posts about Charlie Cook had harmed the integrity, those are the words of the Washington Post, of the organization and violated standards requiring employees

to use social media with what they called civility and respect.

Now, what in particular had Ms.

Atia said about Kirk's assassination?

She posted to the social network Blue Sky on September 10th, the very day that he was shot.

She responded to the outpouring of grief after the shooting of Charlie Kirk.

She said this, refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning up for a white man that espoused violence.

is not the same as violence.

And she wrote that in one of her posts published again.

The post opinion section again had been in flux during the course of the past year.

As you well know, when Jeff Bezos, the newspaper's relatively new owner, was trying to reorient to the section to focus on personal liberties and free markets.

And so what happened in the wake of her posting that is a Washington Post as a result of a year long fight between her and its entities.

Finally, submitted to arbitration.

That's a part of the contract, the decision confirming what the contract between her and the Washington Post had affirmed that they would agree to arbitration and whatever would happen would come out of that would be their agreed upon result.

The Post had last year accused Ms.

Atia of, again, engaging in conduct and writing violative of its standards.

And it's social media posts.

When it fired her for those posts, she said they were in her purview as an opinion columnist.

A clause in that agreement, once again, allows employees to submit these kinds of disputes to arbitration.

So this is not in a formal federal court, not in a formal state court, but unless a part of the arbitration process that the parties agreed to, arbitration generally considered binding in most disputes.

Though some courts have occasionally overturned those kinds of decisions,

unlikely, unlikely here that this arbitration resolution will result in some further litigation in the courts and that this particular resolution will be binding upon the parties.

In her testimony, in all of this she said that she has this First Amendment right to publish things as an opinion writer of the Washington Post and in response to that, in response to that the

opinion editor, the Washington Post, had said that he saw that Ms.

Atia's post in the morning after Kirk died, sent them to leadership there, and that he said, Karen's social media feed yesterday and today is beyond the pale, is what he said, completely unacceptable for someone associated with opinions.

And soon after that, again, these parties met with the chief executive of the Washington Post to discuss those posts.

and ultimately decided that Ms.

Atia had to be fired as a result of that.

During her testimony again, in addition to saying what she said generally about her right to do this, Ms.

Atia defended her social media posts saying that they were part of her work, commenting on our discourse on political violence.

And in a statement calling this decision a landmark victory for one of our nation's crusading journalists,

Her attorneys extolled the virtues of this arbitration result.

Again, the Washington Post obliged now by virtue of this arbitration to reinstate Karen Atia, who is fired after posting about what white men who espouse hatred and violence, what they're all about.

And that, of course, in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination.

An interesting resolution given the focus not only by this administration,

But by the leadership of one of the major journalistic entities in our nation, again, headed by, obviously, Jeff Bezos in his attempt to reclaim and to reestablish some new standards inside the Washington Post.

Ms.

Atia are now a part of the leadership there, again, at least when it comes to opinion authors.

And we'll see how this plays out.

We'll see what kinds of things happen and what kinds of things she now writes.

Obviously, she'll reinstatement, she's indicated that she is going to return to the Washington Post and continue her work there, which again, a part of her First Amendment exercise as she has stated.

A significant issue when it comes to journalism in America

and our First Amendment understandings of that.

Let's move into yet another story much apart from the Supreme Court and federal courts at the highest level.

This one, however, involving courts in Minnesota and also in Texas.

The headline here, once again, is that an ICE agent who was facing state charges in Minnesota in connection with a shooting there,

in Minneapolis has been released late this week after Republican officials in Texas, where he has been detained, prevailed in what's called an extradition battle, a battle between two governors, one in Minnesota and one in Texas, both of them charging that this particular officer, his name is Christian Castro, CESTRO.

He's an immigration, Customs Enforcement Agent.

Both of them sparring about whether or not he should have to face charges in Minnesota.

He had been jailed, this particular ICE agent, for the past three months in Cameron County, Texas.

While Minnesota officials, again, plainly a thousand miles away, sought to have him sent north to face what were assault charges in Minnesota and Minneapolis related to a shooting in January.

that had wounded a Venezuelan immigrant and a lot of that again comes from things that we have discussed previously on this broadcast.

Now specifically what happened way back then was that there was a shooting again federal officials backing Castro and accusing him of specifically

a shooting of Venezuelan man.

His name is Julio Sosa Celis, C-E-L-I-S.

You may recall this, again, we reported on this.

On January 14th, that happened after a long car chase, a part of the official records in this matter, and a short foot pursuit with Sosa Celis's roommate.

State prosecutors at that time had initially charged Castro, saying that he had fired through the door of a home

striking Mr. Sosa Sellas in the leg, and they charged Castro in mid-May in state court in Minneapolis with four counts of assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime.

Castro, who then again returned to Texas shortly after this shooting, did not travel back to Minnesota to face those charges based upon this back and forth about this shooting and his engagement with Mr. Sosa Sellas.

He was arrested instead in Texas in late May on this warrant from Minnesota.

And it's on that basis that he's been detained in court, in jail, rather, based upon that warrant from Minnesota.

The particular defendant here, Castro, has not public addressed the charges against him, did not respond to requests for comment.

But immediately after that shooting, it was significant once again that federal officials initially had backed Castro and accused Mr. Sosa Sellas and his roommate, who was also Venezuelan, of engaging in a sustained attack with a broom and a shovel.

Again, that was the original position of the federal government, that it was exactly Mr. Sosa Sellas who had attacked Mr. Castro.

Days after that shooting, a social cellist and his roommate were charged, actually, in federal court with assaulting a federal law enforcement officer.

And again, all of that happens before federal prosecutors look more closely at all this.

They then dismissed this case in February after the federal investigators, they were determined based upon a video that those agents had liked the light about the events that led to the shooting and instead, instead,

led to the investigation of these agents involved in that in shooting and in particular state charges then come from Minnesota against the ICE agent for once again shooting in through the door of the home where Mr. Sosa Celis was at that time located.

A very circuitous turn of events.

Nonetheless, a warrant again issued by Minnesota.

And the reason why it's back in the news is ever since that time, again, the agent, Mr. Christian Castro, detained in custody in Texas, but fighting extradition sought by Minnesota authorities and the Minnesota governor in particular, seeking to have him returned to Minnesota to face those state charges back there in Minneapolis.

The officials in Texas

fighting that, including the governor there, and seeking not to have that extradition warrant granted.

It is very rare for federal agents, of course, to face state criminal charges, although we've talked a lot about that on this broadcast, as have others, in the wake of the sparring between state authorities and federal authorities in these kinds of cases.

The Trump administration has routinely argued that the charges that Minnesota prosecutors and other state prosecutors have brought filed again against Mr. Castro and others are illegitimate, that federal officers have immunities for doing these kinds of things.

It's also, also very rare for one governor to be disputing with another governor on a request to extradite a criminal defendant.

That's exactly what Governor Greg Abbott has done.

with respect to this warrant coming out of Minnesota.

Well, what happens, of course, is that just this past week, a judge in the federal court there in a ruling on Wednesday has sided with Governor Abbott, and he has said that Judge Rodriguez, that is Judge Fernando Rodriguez, Jr.

said that Minnesota had not proven.

had not proven that Mr. Abbott had done nothing wrong by waiting to act on the extradition request.

This is all about timing.

And the case, the case turning on a central question that is often raised by these kinds of things and that federal and state authorities have wrestled with over a long period of time.

How much discretion do governors have over extradition requests from another state?

Again,

The judge, this is past week, Fernando Rodriguez Jr.

siding with Governor Abbott and saying that even though he was waiting on this for a long time, he had done nothing wrong, that his delay in acting on this does not justify the removal and the exportation and the removal of this particular defendant from Texas, the extradition of him into Minnesota.

The ruling by Judge Rodriguez said that the immigration agent, Christian Castro, could be released from a Texas jail this week after three months in custody.

And indeed, he has done just that.

Texas law significantly limits the attention on extradition to only 90 days.

And that's the reason why this timing is so important.

The Minnesota Attorney General, you may recall, his name is Keith Ellison, said in a statement that he disagreed with this ruling.

That is releasing the agent there based upon the expiration of that 90-day period, the failure of the governor there to act in that 90-day period.

And Ellison's saying this, he says, we will continue litigating this case and do everything in our power to ensure that Castro has returned to Minnesota to face his criminal charges.

Again, all of that coming in the wake of the charges in Minneapolis.

by state authorities with four counts of assault and one count against Castro of falsely reporting a crime.

All of that premise upon is back and forth the investigation that ultimately leads to the charging of Castro on these state charges back in Minnesota.

At the federal courthouse in Brownsville, Texas, lawyers for the two states had argued

about whether Abbott has a legal obligation to act on Minnesota's extradition request before the expiration of this period of time.

A final decision would be left to a judge of the governor signed off on Minnesota's request and state prosecutors in Minnesota had accused Castro of shooting through the front door on that evening of January 14th justifying their extradition request

and the warrant that was issued in the wake of that.

The upshot, of course, is that now this particular agent is released upon the finding of the judge, Fernando Rodriguez, that the time period has expired.

There's been no action by the Texas governor.

There's nothing wrong with this having waited that 90-day period.

And indeed, the agent was released from this Texas jail after Minnesota basically lost its court fight just this past week.

And this request to extradite him, to return him to Minnesota, to answer these charges related to an on-duty shooting with this immigrant back there in Minneapolis.

As Keith Ellison indicates, it's unlikely this case is completely done, more likely to happen down the road, but nonetheless, significant when understanding the back and forth between, in this case, governors and the power of extradition,

And the ways in which they've been sparring with each other in many, many circumstances like this, it also underscores the continuing battle, if you will, between federal authorities and state authorities.

I mentioned already the position of the president and of the Department of Justice that federal authorities, and in particular this ace agent, immigration and customs enforcement, have no obligation to follow state laws and state principles and rules.

and that therefore the prosecution of him from the very start was wrong, therefore the extradition sought by the governor, Tim Walls of Minnesota, could not be supported.

Indeed, a federal judge finding not so much about the warrant and the legitimacy of that, but rather just this past week, the way we have going on here is a legitimate action or non-action by the Texas governor that basically ran out the clock.

And again, like this past week,

The agent, Christian Castro, now released.

They're in Texas and uncertain about what will happen.

The charge is still pending in Minneapolis against him, but plainly without a body to prosecute Minnesota, not at the end of this matter, but according to the Attorney General, now exploring future options for presumably getting this case back on track, if that is at all possible.

given what has happened here.

More to be heard on that particular case and the implications, jurisdictional and the battle between governors in America over this kind of thing.

All of that, all of that, extradition fights between Texas and Minnesota, arbitration coming out of Washington, D.C.

and one of our major newspapers, The Washington Post.

And again, this $17.1 billion resolution of a case

in the northern district of California, all of that in places apart from Capitol Hill, although in one case close to Capitol Hill, the Washington Post, let's return to Capitol Hill and indeed some of the activities that our Supreme Court has been engaging in during the course of this same time period when all of that activity has been taking place.

The Supreme Court, as we know,

is still in its 2025-2026 term.

It has not yet expired that term.

That term, it concludes on September 30th, not too long from now.

But we know that in addition to populating as we reported here previously on its docket for the 2026-2027 caseload that's going to be entertaining beginning on October 1, it also continues to entertain these emergency applications.

And there have been at least three of them.

pending before the Supreme Court, at least two of them having to do with matters coming from this administration.

Let's talk about them and what the Supreme Court has done.

We have talked previously about one of these having to do with the president's major and calamitous executive order, which he has entered that directed the US Postal Service to help decide which voters in upcoming elections should receive mail-in ballots.

that order would also require the Department of Homeland Security and kind of a combination with the Postal Service, but also create some lists of U.S.

citizens that the administration believes could be used to monitor voter rolls of non-citizens in upcoming elections, arguably, arguably for the upcoming election.

Although think about that a lot, note that a lot, because again, the November election is quite literally right around the corner.

Well, what happens is just this past week,

A divided Supreme Court on another emergency application petition once again the shadow docket said just on Monday resolving this emergency application to the United States Supreme Court asking the members of the Supreme Court overrule.

What the lower courts have said, the lower courts saying that the president has no capacity to do this, he's got no role when it comes to the administration of state elections and state polling.

That decision, as you well know, based upon our previous discussions here.

entered principally, although not exclusively, by a federal district court judge in Massachusetts, actually is issued two of them.

Her name, you may recall from our previous discussions, is Indira Talwani, T-A-L-W-A-N-I.

She's listed a couple of these back to back.

She's blocked the president's order finding that it violated the constitution's separation of powers, also determining that Congress had not delegated authority to postal service to determine which voters should receive its ballots,

and that the executive order did not allow enough time beyond all of this to ensure that the elections could proceed.

The significance of all of that is that Judge Talwani's orders have been upheld by the Court of Appeals there in the First Circuit and prompting again, as we reported previously, the administration to seek yet another emergency appeal on the shadow docket going immediately, jumping over.

the further litigation that's continuing to go ahead in those lower courts, asking the Supreme Court to tell those lower courts that they're wrong.

And in fact, on Monday, once again, he's divided Supreme Court after having taken presumably some look at this, decided to side in favor of the administration, allowing the president to go ahead with his plans to restrict mail-in voting before the midterm elections, although again, timing very, very tight on all of that.

The order from the Supreme Court was unsigned as these always are, typical in these emergency rulings.

The majority, however, wrote that it agreed with the government's argument that it should be able to move forward with its plans.

Yes, Mr. President, you can go ahead and do this.

They were finding that the Trump administration was, according to the Supreme Court, likely to suffer irreparable harm unless the justices lifted a freeze that those lower courts, the First Circuit,

and the district court there in Massachusetts had imposed.

A clear unequivocal statement by a majority of the Supreme Court that even while this litigation is continuing, even while the states are moving forward in anticipation of mail-in balloting and other election procedures coming up in just the next days and weeks, the Supreme Court is saying that you can go ahead and do what you need to do to enforce this combination of postal service and Homeland Security.

addressing if there is any issue at all here about the voter registration integrity, once again, supporting this notion implicitly and not explicitly, that there is voter fraud in America.

We know it does not exist, not in Massachusetts, not in the District of Columbia, not in the state of Wisconsin, unless the Supreme Court permitting the president to go ahead on that premise that somehow this mail-in ballot process

Presumably, not just in Massachusetts, but around the country is somehow encouraging voter fraud that needs to be stopped.

It is significant, of course, that the three liberal justices write down party lines here.

Sonia Sotomayor, Katanji Brown Jackson, and Elena Kagan all warn that the majority, they said, needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.

That's the timing piece the district court judge had written about saying it's just too late to do any of this.

and the Supreme Court, again, the majority is saying that although the order is clear, their order was preliminary and said that it's not a final decision, but whether the administration's order will necessarily be lawful once the plans are complete.

On that score, they said time will tell in this unsigned order.

Again, a lot of very curious language here noting that the order itself is not final.

The dissenter is saying, what are you talking about that we're way too close to the election even to throw some chaos into all of this?

And presumably, presumably inviting not only the litigation that this order effectively jumps over, but further action by the lower courts when it comes to whether to enforce or not enforce this executive order, which they have already chosen the lower courts not to enforce.

New York Attorney General, among others around the country calling this ruling a painful setback, predicted would not be the final word from the court.

The issue, of course, is that in the days just ahead, including here in Wisconsin, you've got clerks around the state who are going to be sending out those absentee ballots, getting those in the hands not only of Wisconsin voters, but of voters, again, around the country, other clerks of court in many other states doing the same sort of thing.

And like Letitia James,

the governor of Pennsylvania, for example, one of the hotbed states once again, said the court's decision did not deal with the substance of the executive order asserting that the ruling does not mean his illegal attempt to restrict mail-in voting will go forward, talking a lot about the timing of this and the timing of the lawsuit itself.

What the governor there said was this, Donald Trump does not run elections here in Pennsylvania.

He said, we'll see the Trump administration court.

And again, all of that indicating that timing, not only in the implications of what the Supreme Court has done is throwing some havoc into the process, but also suggesting that there may well be more immediate litigation, arguably even more emergency applications to the Supreme Court, which is the point that the dissenters have made.

The issue here again is the alleged attempt to purge voter registration lists.

of anyone who's not a citizen.

That's sort of implicit in what the president's trying to do.

As I said, the order instructs the Postal Service not to mail ballots on behalf of anyone whose name was not on this finally approved list that he has proposed, even as the Postal Service goes forward and puts this all into place.

Judge Talwani's order, again, in a certain amount of limbo, as is the first circuit's decision, affirming what she has done, it is messy, to say the least, but the Supreme Court

allowing Donald Trump, at least for now, to pursue his male voting limits, at least for now, again, just weeks before the upcoming election.

Let's talk as well about something else that the Supreme Court did this past week on its emergency docket, again, declining to halt the president's White House ballroom construction once again for now.

that all-important language about how we're not making a final determination here.

A 90,000-foot-square-foot ballroom, as you well know, grown in size and scope.

We've talked before about this in the past.

The Solicitor General is saying it's almost too late.

65% of it's done, costs about $400 million.

And again, proceeding, growing every single day.

The president's lawyer is saying this is intertwined with the renovation of an underground military bunker.

Well, Supreme Court, again, in its resolution of this emergency order, to overturn what the lower courts have said, which are again stopping the president from going ahead with this construction that's frankly well underway, as you have seen from photographs there.

Supreme Court, citing with the president once again, said he can continue construction.

of this ballroom to replace that east wing side of the White House that he tore down last fall.

A one sentence order here, the Chief Judge saying that the President can in fact proceed with this.

He said this is a placeholder that gives all nine Chief Justice's additional time to more fully consider whether construction of this 90,000 square foot ballroom can proceed.

He said that he is not providing a specific timeline for when the court would act, but only that a lower court ruling against the Trump administration was paused as he said pending for their order of the undersigned or of the court.

And again, the lower courts have said consistently that Donald Trump has exceeded his authority by moving ahead with this construction.

Only the Congress and others can do that.

No approval here.

They've stopped it.

The Supreme Court has once again consistent with its view of a very powerful presidency has said, President, can go ahead with this.

What that means in terms of construction is that every day, apparently every hour of virtually every day of the week, construction proceeds.

Difficult to imagine how this can be put back in the bottle, if you will, after the Supreme Court has done what is done here.

Once again, on the emergency application, doctors say, go ahead and do this.

even though we're not giving you the final word about the legality.

And finally, here's another one, just coming out of the Supreme Court, not involving the president, but rather the state of Texas Supreme Court, also this past week, again, on emergency application, saying that Texas can enforce a new state law that requires Apple and Google to verify the age of app store users.

as a part of an effort to give parents more control over the content of their children's downloads.

Again, very much related to our very first story in this podcast, the court's brief order.

Again, an emergency application came in response to this emergency request from the tech companies and a group of students in Texas who are telling the justices that the state law violated their free speech rights and therefore that it had to be blocked as a First Amendment violation.

The order entered by the Supreme Court again in favor of Texas saying you can in fact go ahead and enforce this statute requiring Apple and Google to verify the age of its users.

The order once again is temporary.

It's a placeholder.

It sets the rules while litigation continues in those lower courts.

over the constitutionality of the state law.

The justices did not include, as they never do, very seldom do in these cases.

We don't have any reasons for why they did this, typical when they issued these emergency orders, and then there were no noted dissents.

Texas, one of about 20 states that have placed similar limitations past or considered similar age verification laws for electronic devices.

And those, of course, placing burdens on tech giants to restrict children's access to apps amid what can only be regarded as a rising backlash against social media and its impact upon young people.

Again, very reminiscent of our first story, under the Texas law, app store companies must create a way for users younger than 18 to obtain parental consent.

to download apps or to make purchases within apps.

The Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, who's also a candidate for the Senate, as you know, told the court in a filing that the law protected the rights of parents to make decisions about their children's upbringing in the modern world.

And the Texas requirement, however, was challenged by the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a trade group whose members also include Google and Apple.

Along with some student associations like the Students Engage in Advancing Texas, they're a group that advocates for student involvement in education-related policy making.

They argued this was unconstitutional and basically deputizes app stores to police both minors and adults threshold to access

vast amounts of online speech.

For now anyway the Supreme Court saying Texas you can go ahead and do this even while the litigation continues there in the state courts permitting Texas to impose upon these tech giants the requirements to enforce access for people under the age of 18.

All of that happening again in Washington DC

as a part of the emergency docket there.

All of that, the kinds of things we'll continue to monitor here on Amicus Allow Review.

Next week, more coming out from federal courts, more coming out as we talk more about what the Supreme Court's doing in its upcoming docket.

I invite you very much, as you do always, to tune into this broadcasts podcast as we review some of that and the things we can anticipate in the rule of law, the operation of government, and the aspiration for justice in America.

here on Civic Media.

Thank you so much, everybody.