Trump’s FTC Is Suing Meta; Guess Who the Judge Is

A familiar face will be overseeing the court battle between the Trump administration and Meta.

Today, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)’s suit against Big Tech behemoth Meta will commence in the court of Chief Judge James Boasberg. The FTC is arguing that Meta has repeatedly violated federal antitrust law in order to grow and maintain a monopoly in the social media market. 

Meta owns several Big Tech platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads and WhatsApp. As previously reported by MRC Free Speech America, the FTC’s suit against Meta alleges a variety of antitrust violations, including:

• Presenting itself as an “open platform” before changing its policies and banning organizations — such as Circle, MessageMe and Voxer — from its critical application programming interfaces.
• Suppressing price competition by deliberately buying up competitors — such as Glancee and Onavo — not to incorporate them into its business but rather to shut them down.
• Buying Instagram primarily to rob Apple of the chance to merge with it.
• Penalizing developers who wished to leave its ecosystem by buying Octazen, which had their contact importer libraries.   
• Buying WhatsApp because it was a formidable threat to Facebook Messenger, which Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg admitted was an inferior product.
• Banning and otherwise censoring developers who posted links to competitors. 

The case against Meta has significant ramifications for free expression in the United States. MRC’s exclusive CensorTrack database has recorded over 1,700 cases of censorship by Meta, often conducted in conjunction with the administration of President Joe Biden. In March, Meta launched a new feature to make it easier for government officials to direct the censorship of speech on Meta platforms. 

The FTC is currently chaired by Andrew Ferguson, who was promoted to his position by President Donald Trump. Trump has been highly critical of Boasberg, who was appointed to the federal judiciary by then-President Barack Obama.

Last month, Trump truthed: “There is no way for a Republican, especially a TRUMP REPUBLICAN, to win before [Boasberg]. He is Highly Conflicted, not only in his hatred of me — Massive Trump Derangement Syndrome! — but also, because of disqualifying family conflicts.”

Boasberg’s rulings have repeatedly been overturned by higher courts. In 2021, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals partially overturned a decision by Judge Boasberg in litigation over the Dakota Access PipeLine (DAPL). Boasberg had ordered the draining and indefinite shutdown of the DAPL, a project Trump had championed. 

In 2024, Boasberg refused to postpone the sentencing of a former New York Police Department (NYPD) officer to await a U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding whether the crime she was convicted of actually applied to her. The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled that the novel legal theory Boasberg relied upon “defie[d] the most plausible understanding” of the law — meaning that Boasberg had imprisoned the officer unjustly.      

On April 7, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Boasberg had improperly claimed jurisdiction over a dispute between alleged Tren de Aragua gang members and the Trump administration. 

Free Speech is under attack! Contact your representatives and demand they investigate Meta’s censorship. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.