Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of Facebook, has recently launched a legal dispute against the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The action is an attempt to halt FTC efforts to modify a 2020 privacy settlement and has been seen as a significant challenge to the enforcement authority of the federal agency.
In this fresh legal battle, which has raised eyebrows in the legal community, Meta Platforms Inc. accuses the FTC of constitutional violations regarding its enforcement actions. Specifically, Meta sued the FTC over its in-house deliberation process, which the social media giant deems heavily biased in favor of the agency’s commissioners.
Meta’s allegations claim that the FTC’s administrative process is more advantageous to its commissioners than proceedings in an independent court would be. This contention forms the crux of their dispute and underlines the broader questions raised about the constitutionality of the FTC’s enforcement structure.
This lawsuit comes as the second attempt by Meta to block changes to a privacy settlement from the previous year, underscoring an ongoing tension between the social media titan and regulatory bodies. As it stands, this lawsuit could be seen as a test case for questioning the constitutionality of federal agencies’ structures and determining the boundaries of such institutions’ enforcement actions.
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