More than 40 state attorneys general on Wednesday said they planned to appeal the dismissal of their antitrust lawsuit against Facebook, setting up a protracted legal fight to rein in the power of the Silicon Valley giant.
The states would be pushing back on a decision made last month by a federal judge who eviscerated their arguments that Facebook had obtained a monopoly through its acquisitions of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 and had harmed competition. The judge said that the regulators’ attempts to break up the social media company came too many years after the mergers were approved.
“The court is aware of no case, and plaintiffs provide none, where such a long delay in seeking such a consequential remedy has been countenanced in a case brought by a plaintiff other than the federal government,” the judge, James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said.
Mr. Boasberg also dismissed a similar complaint brought by the Federal Trade Commission, criticizing the agency’s claims of monopolization, but he directed the agency to rewrite its lawsuit. The F.T.C. is expected to resubmit its lawsuit to the court by Aug. 19. The states’ notice of plan to appeal did not include new antitrust arguments and was filed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
“We filed this notice of appeal because we disagree with the court’s decision and must hold Facebook accountable for stifling competition, reducing innovation, and cutting privacy protections,” said Letitia James, New York’s attorney general. “We can no longer allow Facebook to profit off of exploiting consumer data.”
Facebook has vociferously refuted the state and federal regulators’ lawsuits, saying most the evidence used against the company now were presented to the F.T.C. when that agency approved the mergers years earlier. The company argues it does not have a monopoly, pointing to competition from Snap, Twitter and messaging applications.