Judicial panel refuses to pause return of Texas lawsuit against Google

By Diane Bartz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Texas won a round in its antitrust lawsuit with Alphabet's Google on Thursday after a U.S. judicial panel refused to pause a decision to return the lawsuit to federal court in Texas.

The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation decided in June to agree to a Texas request to send the lawsuit alleging Google abused its dominance in advertising technology back to federal court in the Lone Star state.

The judicial panel did grant a Google request to stay the remand order for seven days to give Google time to appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

At Google's request, the lawsuit, which was originally filed in Texas, was moved in August 2021 to a federal court in New York, where other advertising technology cases were being heard.

Texas has argued that a measure that became law in 2022, after the lawsuit was filed, granted state attorneys general the right to choose where an antitrust lawsuit will be litigated. Google has argued that the law is not retroactive.

"The panel followed clear law in its ruling," said Paige Willey, spokesperson for the Texas attorney general's office, adding that Texas would continue to pursue Google.

Google said that it was confident that it would show that the Texas case was "wrong on both the facts and the law."

The Texas lawsuit accuses Google of illegally dominating the process that advertisers use to put ads online. Website publishers say that has hurt them financially.

Texas wanted to hear the case in its Eastern District, which has a reputation for making rapid decisions on cases.

The search and advertising giant, which also makes a smartphone operating system and owns YouTube, faces antitrust lawsuits around the world that mostly allege abuse of dominance of one sort or another. Alphabet has denied any wrongdoing.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Cynthia Osterman)