This is Bloomberg Law with June Brusso from Bloomberg Radio. Florida's very conservative Supreme Court upheld the state's fifteen week abortion ban, which now allows one of the nation's strictest abortion bans to take effect on May first. In the state. It makes abortion illegal after six weeks, before most women know they're pregnant. But in a sort of split decision, the court allowed a referendum that will let the state's voters decide in Florida whether they want an amendment to
the state constitution allowing abortion until viability. With abortion now on the ballot in Florida, Democrats are seeing a chance to flip the state in the presidential election. The future Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who often boasts about appointing three of the justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, didn't want to talk to reporters about the Florida to ruling, while President Joe Biden denounced the Florida ruling, calling it outrageous and promising to codify Roe v.
Wade and as mag officials are calling on and not for a national ban on the right to choose in every state I promise you for the Democratic Congress, Tom and I will make Rovy Wade the law of the land again.
I promise.
Joining me is healthcare attorney Harry Nelson of Nelson Hardiman Harry tell us about the Florida Supreme Court's decisions on Monday.
Then the repeal of Roe v. Wade in the DABS case. Florida had had in place a fifteen week ban on abortion that Governor Discentis proposed while the Supreme Court decision was pending. In twenty twenty three, a much more restrictive six week ban was passed by the Florida legislature, but the Florida Supreme Court had briefly delayed its going into effect while looked at the question of whether there was a constitutional right to privacy that included a right to
abortion in Florida. And so what happened this week is that the Florida Supreme Court essentially ruled by a four to three vote that a proposed constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to abortion that it could go to the ballot. But at the same time, it essentially did not find that the existing state constitution included a protection of the rights to abortion as part of the privacy right.
So in other words, the Florida Supreme Court basically allowed the new six week band to go into effects, but it also decided to allow the voters of Florida to decide whether to amend the constitution. So we have these kind of parallel decisions that are extremely confusing about how Florida is grappling with abortion.
Yeah, because they didn't have to issue the decisions on the same day. Do you think that they were trying to placate the supporters of abortion or just that they were even handed.
I mean, I do think they're wrestling with both their personal beliefs about, you know, how far the right of privacy extends. And we can see that it's a very conservative court, you know, that was six to one in finding that there was this right to ban abortion, but at the same time recognizing that the ultimately, you know, the constitutional process of Florida allows for the voters to
change the constitution. So I think they were trying to sort of find a pass through that both expressed their personal beliefs about how far abortion rights and privacy rights go and also acknowledged, you know that there is a process in place for their personal judgments being overridden by the voters.
So the privacy clause in the Florida Constitution states, quote, every natural person has the right to be let alone and free from governmental intrusion into the person's private life. How is that not protective of abortion rights? Right?
Obviously, we've had a number of state supreme courts that have found that part of the right to privacy right, which is really something that was not recognized until the last sort of one hundred and twenty one hundred and forty years, but did the right to privacy includes the right to be left alone from the government and to have personal autonomy over all kinds of choices, including healthcare choices, including the right of a woman to terminate a pregnancy.
So we definitely have seen many many supreme courts, state supreme courts take this issue on and find that implied rights. And of course we also have a number of state supreme courts that have either explicitly said so California did that, Michigan did that, and a handful of restrictive states that said our constitution absolutely does not include it. I mean, I think this question of the right to privacy has been a kind of a question that hasn't been fully
resolved globally. Right there still are seemed to be tensions on both sides about how far how far go than about the competing right of the unborn child on one side and the rights of a pregnant woman on the other side.
My favorite part of this that is facetious. A majority of the justices said the voters didn't understand that the privacy clause extended to abortion when they added to the state constitution in nineteen eighty.
Yeah, it's I mean, it's really interesting, right, like privacy. I don't know how they come to that decision. Obviously, privacy is a much broader set of rights, about the right to be you know, not monitored and have your life intruded on, about the right to travel, and about the right to live in the way that you want. So I think it's confusing to understand how they came to this, you know, definitive conclusion that abortion wasn't explicitly
contemplated or somehow was outside of privacy. As I said, we already had multiple state supreme courts who have found the opposite, And so how they sort of determined what was in the mind of Florida voters is a mystery to me.
And also in twenty twelve, Florida voters rejected an amendment that would have exempted abortion from constitutional privacy protection. So there were all kinds of indications they overturned decades of legal precedent with this decision, didn't they? Because back in nineteen eighty nine the Florida Supreme Court ruled that it did apply to abortion.
Yeah, so they absolutely reversed that. And this was obviously a major shift from the Florida Supreme Court's own previous rulings on the state constitutional privacy right. It has not escaped noticed that. I believe all but one of the justices on the Supreme Court currently are appointees of the current governor, who's taken a much more conservative position on this.
But yeah, clearly this is a major shift from the way that the Florida Constitution was understood by its own Supreme Court for a long time.
Does the argument they use that the past abortion cases had been wrongly decided based on this overbroad interpretation of the privacy clause in a state constitution, Is that similar to the argument that the Supreme Court made in overturning Row well, it's.
Look, in the case of the US Supreme Court decision and the Federal Constitution, we do not have a explicit right to privacy right. So in the US Constitution, over a series of cases involving things like contraception and the right of an interracial couple to marry, and the decision over gay marriage, we had the Supreme Court of the
United States wrestling with finding a right to privacy. The famous language was in the penumbra, meaning like sort of hidden away or implied in the Fourth Amendment right of the Bill of Rights the Federal Constitution to be free from search and seizure and onreasonable government intrusion. So here in the case of Florida, we have a much more explicit reference to privacy right. Most of the state constitutions were written at a much later period where privacy was
already an explicit concept. So in some ways there was more room for conservative justices at the federal level to question whether previous Supreme Court justices had gone too far and been too aggressive in reading in a privacy right
and implying it without even the word privacy there. But this is a more aggressive decision because privacy is very clearly part of this state constitution, and it's hard to see how a right to determine the management of a pregnancy, including to terminate it, is not an essential part of privacy. But obviously these justices appear to have been moved by the sort of competing interest of the embryo of the fetus, you know, of the privacy rights other than the rights
of the mother. So I think that's where this decision comes down. But it's clearly more aggressive and more conservative than the US Supreme Court's decision in my view.
And Harry, why is the sixth week ban able to go into effect now that they've ruled on the fifteen week ban?
I mean, this was a decision of the Florida legislature, right, So when Governor Destantis proposed and the Florida Legislature enacted the fifteen week ban, it appears that they chose that time period because that was the law that was from Mississippi that was before the Supreme Court. They tried to match that law so that if that law stood, they could pass it. And that law went into effect in July of twenty twenty two, a few weeks after the
Supreme Court decision. But it became clear that the trend among pro life advocates was for a much more restrictive time. Obviously, those weeks between six and fifteen are massive difference. So they came back. The Florida legislature came back and passed a much more restrictive law. And the only reason it hadn't gone into effectings was because of this older Florida Supreme Court rulings that there was a right to privacy
here that prevented it. So it required the Florida Supreme Court to come back revisit the issues you know in this week, I mean make a different decision really to revise their understanding of privacy so that the six week ban could take effect and few.
Women realize that they're pregnant at six weeks.
Right, The difference between six weeks and fifteen weeks in a woman realizing that she's pregnant, let alone making a decision about whether to carry the pregnancy or whether to terminate it is obviously those are crucial, crucial weeks. As you say, you know, the likelihood is that many women will not even realize that they're pregnant, let alone comes to that kind of a decision in that time period.
So this is something that is it's practically a ban on abortion when you make the time period that short.
And this decision has an effect outside Florida because it was a place where women seeking abortions in other states with more restrictive abortion laws came to get an abortion.
Yeah.
Absolutely, the whole issue of having Florida as a at least still somewhat permissive jurisdiction for women who moved, you know, with alacrity, who could move fairly promptly to come and travel to the state was a good option for all of the adjacents Southeastern states. I do think that this decision is yet another driver for that those women that
will lead towards more use of medication and telemedicine. And you know, I think this pressure will take away the travel option to Florida at least until this the voters of Florida have a chance to decide about whether to sort of re it in state a longer option. And I think it will move more people, more women to utilize telemedicine and utilize medication which can be shipped into the state, you know, whether the states approve of it or not.
Coming up next on the Bloomberg Lawn Show. I'll continue this conversation with healthcare attorney Harry Nelson, and we'll talk about that ballot measure on abortion, which Florida voters will decide on in November. I'm June Grasso. When you're listening to Bloomberg. Florida Supreme Court issued to rulings on abortion
on Monday. One will allow the states six week abortion band to go into effect, while the other will let voters decide on a proposed ballot measure in November that will protect access to abortion up until viability, which is considered to be around twenty four weeks into pregnancy. Abortion on the ballot could have major political implications. In every state where abortion rights have appeared on the ballot, the side of abortion rights has won, including in conservative states
like Kentucky, Ohio, and Kansas. I've been talking to healthcare attorney Harry Nelson of Nelson Hardiman Harry. The ballot measure says, in part that no law shall prohibit penalized delay or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient's health, as determined by the patient's healthcare provider. It's pretty broad, isn't it.
Yeah, the ballot measure basically has the concept of fetale ability built in, which I believe is understood to extend to over twenty weeks, so essentially allowing women in the first two trimesters more or less to have the option of abortion. So it is a fairly broad and liberal ruling.
It would essentially give definitely a period of at least eight plus the maybe nine weeks longer than the fifteen week option, which is something that the pro choice advocates have been wanting just to give women more time to
make choices. So yeah, it's a fairly liberal, permissive constitutional amendments that will be before Florida voters on the ever ballot, and it will be interesting to see how that plays out alongside the presidential election and all the other really very important decisions that Florida voters have to make this year.
Well, Republican lawmakers are arguing that it will allow abortions late in pregnancy.
It's absolutely true. I mean, look, when going back to the medication abortion option for a minute. You know, the the approval for mes apristone, which we were talking about only a couple of weeks ago when Spreme Court heard argument only is allowed to be used up to eleven weeks. So this is definitely certainly a much broader issue, and you know, it'll be interesting to see how voters react.
I think that it does seem that in the vast majority of places, a majority of voters support more permissive abortion rights. But the question of whether the language here is broader than will attract the majority will be interesting to see.
Well. The three female dissentis appointees on the Court dissented on the ballot measure due to concerns that the impact of the amendment was far greater than what voters will be led to believe at the ballot box. They really don't give much credence to voters. They act like voters don't understand what's right in front of them.
Yeah, it's an interesting point. Look, I think we've seen that voters in states like Kansas have really given a rebuke to extremely conservative positions taken by their legislators, by
same court jurists in those states. Personally, I have more faith in the in the voters to make themselves heard, and we've seen that when these issues go to the ballot box, there's far more support and it's harder for either side frankly to engage in legislative gamesmanship or the sort of take advantage of headcounting on particular courts to get their way. And so from my perspective, I think it's a good thing that we're going to the voters, but obviously not everybody.
Feels that way, and I have to get sixty percent for it to pass. So now, abortion rights groups in several states are trying to put measures on the ballot, and anti abortion groups have deployed a wide range of tactics to keep proposals off the ballot, including challenging the language.
Yeah, it's very interesting the way that popular referendu you know that voter initiatives have become a threat to the pro life movement and to advocacy for more restrictive abortion laws. And it just know the extent to which the idea of restricting women's choices and women's rights to reproductive healthcare access is just fundamentally unpopular and not something that the majority of Americans want, and yet something that has succeeded by virtue of you know, this whole legal effort in
the courts and legislatures. And so its ironic in a way that the most democratic process we have, which is to let voters decide at the ballot box, is now the threat to the same people, and it definitely should give pause to anybody who really thinks that the issue
here has political support. You know that in Republican politics nationally, we've now seen several cycles in which excessive restriction of abortion has been politically unpopular and costly in numerous elections, and so it's surprising that we continue to see this resistance to acknowledging and honoring the will of the voters to have some level of abortion protection and access the
reproductive healthcare choices available. And it seems like it's a decision to try to restrict this beyond what voters want is having a political cost that was continuing to see play out for.
Helping him speaking about the costs of going too far in the case that got national attention where a woman in Texas was charged with murder, arrested, and spent three days in jail in twenty twenty two after health officials reported her to authorities for attempting to terminate her pregnancy. She's now suing the Star County District Attorney's office for more than a million dollars, claiming the fallout from the case has changed her life forever.
Lazelle Gonzalez, she's doing the prosecutors now, saying that they knowingly misrepresented the fact in order to arrest her and charge her, and that they caused significant harm to her. That's quite a fascinating case about sort of how local prosecutors may have gone much too far in the way that they really made the spectacle of this poor woman having her spend time in jail, publishing her mugshot in the paper, I mean, putting her private medical information into
the newspapers. And so, you know, just another chapter in this is our case where she is now going after them and essentially alleging that they violated her rights in the way that they went after her for criminal liability for her decision to take medication abortion. So it's just yet another example of this like crazy back and forth, chaotic situation wherein where literally, you know, a private healthcare choice that this woman made led to such an extreme reaction, and the.
District attorney was investigated by the state bar of Texas over his handling of the case, and they reached a settlement so that his office could continue prosecuting cases. The settlement conditions included a twelve hundred and fifty dollars fine and a year year long probation of his legal license. He told the Associated Press, I made a mistake in that case. We'll see if that translates into money damages for Gonzalez. Thanks so much, Harry. As always, that's Harry
Nelson of Nelson Hardiman. Let's turn out to some surprising admissions today in Fifth Circuit oral arguments over the Texas law known as SB four that authorizes state officials to arrest, detain, and deport non citizens who enter the country illegally. Joining me is Bloomberg, Texas legal reporter Madelein Meckelberg. Was the State of Texas on the defensive in these arguments.
They definitely were. They knew coming into the arguments today that they were facing an uphill battle. This same three judge panel of the Fifth Circuit just last week had ruled to block this law while they consider the full appeal. So I think what we saw from Texas today was a more nuanced position on what they'd be willing to
accept from the court. At one point, remarkably, we heard the Texas Solicitor General suggests that perhaps Texas had gone too far in trying to pass this statute right, and that they'd be willing to if the court decided that they wanted to block the law from going into effects, they asked that they still let some provisions of the measure go into effect, specifically one that would let the state order the removal of people who they've identified as being here illegally.
What part of the law did they think went too far?
Well. The way that he framed that idea was that Texas crafted this statute as a whole with the intention of going right up to the line of what Supreme Court precedent has allowed up to this point, which, as I'm sure you and your listeners know, is basically one hundred and fifty years of the federal government being the
one responsible for immigration enforcement and the border. And so Texas was trying to take as much authority as possible with this statute while not running afoul of that precedent, because they knew that this law would get challenged in the courts and that they'd end up here right now. But it seemed that Texas was willing to allow the court to temporarily put on hold. So that's important to note too, Like the conversation that's happening right now is
all over a preliminary injunction. This is not the last word on the matter. But they seemed okay for now for most of the statute to be blocked by the court if they could keep on the books that provision that would let them remove people.
How did the judges on the Fifth Circuit on the panel react to that?
It was a little bit like deja vous since it was the same three judges that had heard this case a few weeks ago. We had Judge Andrew Oldham, who was the one that was clearly in support of this law and thought it should go into effects. He had a lot of questions and concerns for the DOJ attorney that was there, asking about whether the court had the authority to block this law in totality before it's been allowed to go into effect. But the other judges were
a little more quiet. Judge Erma Ramirez hardly spoke at all during the hearing, but we know that she previously wanted to block the law. And I think the swing vote here that everyone's paying attention to is Chief Judge Priscilla Richmond, she has been on the fence in the past. She did rule in favor of blocking the law previously.
In this case, she raised some of the same concerns today that she did in that opinion, which is basically this idea that President up to this point has been that immigration is the responsibility of the federal government.
And just explain what happened last week when this same three judge panel made a decision.
So this case has been bouncing back and forth between the courts, and in doing so, the courts of let the law go into effect, block the law, let it go into effect. Last week, this same three judge panel of the Fifth Circuit, they basically said that they were going to allow a district court order blocking the law to remain in effect while they paid the full appeal of that order. So what we heard today were arguments on the merits of the case, the appeal of the
district judge ruling. Previously, all they were doing was deciding whether or not the law should go into effect while they weigh this case.
And this case already went to the Supreme Court. Tell us what happened there.
When the case got to them. They said it was too early for them to get involved. Because the Fifth Circuit had not issued a stay pending appeal, They issued an administrative stay to hang the decision while they decided on a stay pending appeal while they decided the appealed.
Congratulations, I'm keeping all that straight. I see that the Chief Judge, who most people do say is the swing vote here, towards the end of the argument, emphasized that states aren't permitted to remove non citizens, and the Supreme Court decided that striking down an immigration law in Arizona in twenty twelve. Quote it's on the books. So did she appear to be leaning against this law?
I would say so, and that language is coming basically directly from the order they issued last week on this and the Arizona decision is key here, and it's what the US government has been turning to frequently in arguing against letting this law go into effect. But I think that per point also raises a bigger question here that I think a lot of people have, which is, how
is Texas actually going to enforce this law? This is something they talked about today, and that removal proceedings specifically because people who come to the country have certain rights of asylum. There's processes in place from the federal government, and it's not clear at this point how this Texas law might impact federal immigration enforcement activities that are ongoing, and that's something that I think Judge Richmond appeared concerned about today too.
It appears that the writing is on the wall, but we'll see. Thanks Madeline. That's Madeline Meckelberg, Bloomberg, Texas Legal reporter coming up next. Why Google is deleting billions of data records. This is Bloomberg. Google has agreed to delete billions of records containing personal information collected from more than one hundred thirty six million people in the US who surfed the Internet through its Chrome web browser. It's part of a settlement in a class action lawsuit accusing the
search giant of illegal surveillance. The lawsuit accused Google of tracking Chrome user's Internet activity even when they had switched the browser to the incognito setting that's supposed to shield them from being shadowed by Google. The details of the deal emerged in a court filing on Monday, more than three months after Google and the attorney's handling the class action case disclosed they had resolved the June twenty twenty
lawsuit targeting Chrome's privacy controls. Consumers represented in the class action lawsuit will not receive any damages or any other payments in the settlement. Joining me is data privacy expert Austin Chambers, a partner at Dorsey and Whitney. For those who are not familiar, tell us about the incognito browsing mode on Google.
Google. It has the Chrome browser, and through the Chrome Browser, it has several settings and pug up into the corner there's the incognito mode. It's a very popular thing. I think many people use it thinking that they're protecting their privacy. It basically what it does is it's a tool that Chrome makes available, and many other browsers have similar sorts of functions. It doesn't store cookies in your browser, it
doesn't store your browsing history. So many people use this if they just want to again sort of hide their browsing history on a device that's maybe shared among the family or something along those lines.
So the suit that was filed in twenty twenty, what did it accuse Google of?
So the original suit claimed that this incognito mode was essentially deceptive. So when users begin to use they start a session in incognito, they would see this character. They called him a spy. It looked like he was hidden behind sunglasses with a little hat. They've made these disclosures that stated that you're not being tracked, that your session will be private, and that Google wouldn't collect any information
about you. The problem is that as people go about the Internet, really all incognito does is prevent your browser, that instance that you have installed on your computer of Chrome, from collecting data about your browsing history. And it made delete some of the cookies. But what it wasn't doing was blocking other of Google's technologies like Google Analytics or their ad services, all the things where they make their money, as well as other things. So of course different parties
can also see your web traffic. Your ISP could always see your traffic, your employer might be able to see your traffic, and again different advertising vendors could probably see your traffic. All these parties are of course able to
do with it what they want. And importantly, Google was taking information about incognito browsers and they were continuing to perform analytics and essentially track incognito users across the web and even though the Chrome browser said that Google wasn't collecting this information, really only that Chrome browser wasn't Google itself was fundamentally still collecting data about all users as they browsed the Internet using the incognitive browser.
Google vigorously fought the lawsuit until the district judge rejected a request to dismiss the case last August, which would set up a potential trial. Is it just that Google fights every lawsuit or was there anything in particular about this lawsuit that it feared.
I think this is one of the Google I think vigorously fights a lot of cases, especially these privacy cases. I think they tend to create negative case law. There's not been it's been sort of slow to develop in the US the sort of common law or various case
law around privacy claims, especially in the advertising space. And I think that's sort of the risk in this case is that it's sort of exposed to an extent what Google was doing through its other products and the ability and capabilities they had to track users through Google Analytics, through ads, and sort of how pervasive the web tracking was. And it's not as simple as people think. It's not so simple to stay private on the Internet as opening up in browser, and I think that this is one
of those things. It's very negative, you know, for I think their reputation and presented a risk. And obviously in this particular claim, they were leging I think five billion in damages. We never got to exactly whether or not that number would hold up, but in any event, it was a very large number.
Yeah, So now tell us. As part of the settlement, Google has to delete billions of data records.
So Google agreed basically to four key things. The first thing is that they had to change this this disclosure as I mentioned, the spy guy or it's saying in this idea that you know your session is private, So they basically said that other people can track you, including Google, across the internet. They basically clarified these disclosures to say just as much that it's just your browsing history. Essentially,
it's not being stored here. They also had to disable what are called third party cookies, which are basically advertising tools they can track you across the internet, so those
are disabled by default. And then, as you suggested, they have to delete the ex data that was collected from incognito users over the years, and what's somewhat interesting is that Google was able to identify all of the records that were related to incognito users, which really isn't supposed to be the case, but they were able to do it.
And this results in i think they said, hundreds of billions of records and again a ton of work in identifying that data and ultimately deleting it from their records.
So it's going to cost Google a certain amount to delete that.
Absolutely.
Is this a trend, This is a settlement, but our courts also where data collection is found to be illegal, our courts forcing companies to delete data.
Yes, this is a trend. We've been watching for a few years now. In particular, the FTC has been particularly active. So the FTC is probably the most robust enforcer of
privacy laws under the general consumer protection frameworks. So over the last few years, as they've explored different companies sort of unfair or deceptive practices that have resulted in unlawful data collection, the remedies that they've been seeking are fundamentally and not just fines, but really coming in requiring them to delete source data and beyond that, any data derived from the source data that was collected lawfully and any models or algorithms that were built using that data, so
relatively robust remedies. And then you know, kind of looking forward as we look at sort of how AI is blowing up across the industry, this is a real potential risk for companies that are sort of building these models and collecting data.
You know, as you mentioned, Google for the next five years will allow private browsing users to block third party cookies. So that's just for five years. It seems like something you should always be able to block.
And there are there are tools that have been available on the market for probably fifteen or more years at this point. I'm sure many people are familiar with ad blocker plus or you know, the similar Ghostry I think is another popular when there's a several of these out on the marketplace that are basically they're ad blockers, and these are basically tools that you can install in your browser.
They run off of lists have lists of all basically all known third party trackers, at least the common ones, and they simply strip the code out of the website. So if you've ever been browsing with an ad blocker, you've probably seen the pop ups that come up and say, you know you're blocking our ads. We can't make money. You know obviously it's impacting revenue. Please turn your ad blocker off. So we see these sorts of things. These
the tools are relatively powerful. Another interesting piece really is the Google itself is moving away from third party cookies as a tracking tool, and they're moving to different different methods of sort of tracking and delivering ads to users. So, in one sense, even though it's only for five years, the trend has been away from third party cookies into alternative tracking methods.
A Google spokesperson said, the company is pleased to settle this lawsuit, which we always believe was merit list. We never associate data with users when they use incognito mode. Is that true?
Certainly, the claims alleged that there was an ability to identify or make its users identifiable. Interesting to understand what they meant by i'd never identify users. This is something that oftentimes in the advertising space, you don't necessarily identify someone by name, but what you can do is track their device or track their browser or a similar session something like that. So it's not to say that they know who you are and link that to a profile.
Necessarily tied to your name, but they can certainly sort of impact your experience, and they do know how your devices are used on the web.
Yeah, he said, we are happy to delete old technical data that was never associated with an individual and was never used for any form of personalization. So Google tried to sort of downplay this whole thing, said that, you know, the plaintiffs originally wanted five billion dollars in this class action and they're not getting any money. But the attorneys who represented the Google users said that this was a major victory for personal privacy. Do you agree? Is this a major victory?
I wouldn't characterize it as a major vigo. I do think it's an important milestone. I think it really does make I would say two key points. First is that this is a case where Google was forced to change their disclosures about how data is collected. People have to become more transparent about their data collection practices, and I think pushing the industry in that direction and setting that
milestone is important. And then, second, as I mentioned, requiring data deletion, even though this didn't necessarily reach the models or the algorithms that Google may have built using this data, it does force companies to really think about how they collect data and the rights that they'll have in it long term. You know, forcing them to delete data is still an impactful remedy.
The Planeff's lawyers valued the settlement at four point seventy five billion dollars to seven point eight billion, and they calculated that on the potential ad sales that the personal information collected through Chrome could have generated in the past and future without the new restrictions. Is that a difficult I mean, is that calculation difficult to make? Is that sort of.
Not?
Yeah, it does. It does seem like an interesting number. Obviously, they you know, sort of dispute that number in different ways. There's sort of valuing the settlement at that amount. Of course, the users were I think the original claimant said that, you know, the five billion dollar number came from a number. I think that Google originally had agreed to pay users for their browsing history, so they had, you know, set it at some number of dollars per user, per per
time period or something like that. So interesting how they come up with these numbers, but I think it always involves a degree of creative accounting.
Fair enough, Thanks so much, Austin that's Austin Chambers of Dorsey and Whitney. Google may have settled this lawsuit, but it's still facing legal threats on the regulatory frontier that could have a far bigger impact on its business depending on the outcomes. During a trial last fall, the Justice Department outlined its allegations that Google is abusing the dominance of its search engine to thwart competition and innovation, and a federal judge schedule to hear closing arguments in the
case on May first before issuing a ruling. Google is also facing potential changes to its app store for smartphones powered by the Android software that could undercut its revenue from commissions after a federal jury last year concluded the company was running an illegal monopoly. A hearing examining possible revisions that Google may have to make to its play store is scheduled for late May. And that's it for
this edition of the Bloomberg Law Podcast. Remember you can always get the latest legal news by subscribing and listening to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at Bloomberg dot com Slash podcast Slash Law. I'm June Grosso and this is Bloomberg