States ask U.S. court to reinstate Facebook antitrust lawsuit

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Dozens of states led by New York asked a U.S. federal appeals court on Friday to reinstate an antitrust lawsuit filed against Facebook.

"Facebook is a monopolist that has exploited its immense market power to crush competition. Through an ongoing course of conduct to 'buy or bury' nascent competitors, Facebook has maintained a monopoly that harms its users and the public at large," wrote lawyers for New York and other states in a filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

The company, which has since rebranded to Meta Platforms, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Previously, it said it was innocent of wrongdoing.

New York Attorney General Letitia James said Facebook was bad for consumers. "Time and again, the social media giant has used its market dominance to force small companies out of business and reduce competition for millions of users," she said.

The group, made up of 46 states, Guam and the District of Columbia, argued that U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of the District of Columbia erred in ruling they had waited too long to file the lawsuit.

They argued that states are allowed delays that private plaintiffs are not. They also argued that if the court determined they did wait too long, states are allowed deference that others are not because of their role in protecting the public interest.

Boasberg had also thrown out a related Federal Trade Commission complaint against Facebook in June but allowed the agency to refile the case. It did so, and Boasberg said this week the case would be allowed to go forward.

Both the FTC and the states had asked the court in 2020 to order Facebook to sell Instagram, which it bought for $1 billion in 2012, and WhatsApp, which it bought for $19 billion in 2014.

The lawsuits followed years of investigation of the four biggest U.S. tech giants, as well as lawsuits against Facebook and Alphabet's Google.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz and Elizabeth Culliford; Editing by Leslie Adler, Jonathan Oatis and David Gregorio)