National Roundup

North Dakota
Civil rights lawsuit accuses a white supremacist group of racial intimidation
Two nonprofits have sued a white nationalist hate group in North Dakota, alleging that it committed racial intimidation by defacing businesses and public property around the city of Fargo with the group’s logo and other graffiti.

The lawsuit filed against Patriot Front in federal court on Friday alleges that the group, two of the group’s leaders and 10 others violated the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which the complaint says “was designed to prevent precisely the kind of conspiratorial racist activity that Defendants perpetrated in this case.”

The lawsuit, filed by the North Dakota Human Rights Coalition, the Immigrant Development Center and the center’s executive director, says Patriot Front also posted “anti-immigrant propaganda” days after a man of Syrian descent fatally shot a Fargo police officer and wounded two others in July. The suit seeks a jury trial and damages of an amount to be determined at trial, as well as attorneys’ fees and other relief.

Patriot Front “is probably one of the most active white nationalist hate groups in the U.S.,” said Rachel Carroll Rivas of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors such groups but did not participate in the lawsuit.

The group emphasizes “public actions” such as posting racist flyers, holding demonstrations and engaging in public displays “meant to make people fearful,” said Carroll Rivas, deputy director for research and analysis with the center’s Intelligence Project.

The lawsuit filed Friday alleges that Patriot Front members vandalized businesses and public property in the summer and fall of 2022. It specifically cites Patriot Front logos and designs spray-painted on the International Market Plaza, an indoor market area for immigrant business owners, and defaced murals, including one depicting Black women wearing hijabs.

As a result of the vandalism, the complaint says, shopkeepers have lost customers, reduced their hours and fear for their safety.

Patriot Front’s actions “were intended to cause fear and deprive others — especially immigrants of color — of their rights, and, unfortunately, Patriot Front achieved that result,” the complaint states.

Vandalism also occurred near a Liberian-owned restaurant, in a pedestrian tunnel, and at a coffee shop and arts collective owned by LGBTQ people and people of color, according to the complaint.

Recent vandalism took place after the July 14 fatal shooting in Fargo carried out by 37-year-old Mohamad Barakat, a Syrian national who came to the U.S. in 2012 on an asylum request and became a U.S. citizen in 2019. North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley said last month that Barakat’s motive remains unknown, but he appeared to be targeting police officers in what authorities have said was likely part of a larger, planned attack.

Other lawsuits in recent years have cited the Ku Klux Klan Act, including cases brought against former President Donald Trump and others in connection with the siege of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

A Black teacher and musician cited the law last month in his federal lawsuit alleging that Patriot Front members surrounded and assaulted him in a coordinated and racially motived attack last year in Boston.

The Reconstruction-era law seeks to protect the civil rights of marginalized groups of people. The statute has been cited in employment-law cases and in contract-dispute cases between corporations, and also in lawsuits alleging violence and terroristic fear since the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, said Ayesha Bell Hardaway, professor of law at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Law and director of the school’s Social Justice Law Center.

“It’s important, I think, for us to be mindful of the fact that violence ... and terrorism related to white supremacy isn’t a relic of the past,” she told The Associated Press.


Utah
Google reaches tentative settlement with 36 states and DC over alleged app store monopoly
Thirty-six states and the District of Colombia have reached an agreement in principle with Google to settle a lawsuit filed in 2021 over the tech giant’s alleged monopolistic control of app distribution for the software that runs most of the world’s cellphones.

The agreement, cited in a court filing late Tuesday by both sides, is subject to approval by the state attorneys general and the board of directors of Google’s parent company, the execution of an agreement and court approval.

Terms were not disclosed. The Utah attorney general’s office, the lead plaintiff, did not offer immediate comment, nor did Google.

A trial date had been set for Nov. 6.

The complaint filed in a Northern California federal court echoed similar allegations that mobile game maker Epic Games made against Google that is scheduled to go to trial in November.

Apple prevailed in a separate suit Epic filed against it over the separate app store it runs exclusively for iPhones, with a federal appeals court upholding in April its sole control of app distribution.

Google still faces several major antitrust lawsuits filed by the Department of Justice and other government agencies across the U.S. focused on alleged search-related and advertising market monopolistic behavior. Justice’s search-related case is set for trial on Sept. 12.

In November, Google settled with 40 states over the tracking of user location, paying $391 million.

The Utah-led suit was among actions taken in recent years to try to curtail the enormous power amassed by Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, which have built unprecedented digital empires by corraling consumers into services with minimal competitors.

Like the Epic lawsuit, the states’ lawsuit focused primarily on the control Google exerts on its Play app store so it can collect commissions of up to 30% on digital transactions within apps installed on smartphones running on the Android operating system. Those devices represent more than 80% of the worldwide smartphone market.

Although its app commissions are similar to Apple’s, Google has tried to distinguish itself by allowing consumers to download apps from other places than its Play store. Apple, by contrast, doesn’t allow iPhone users to install apps from any other outlet than its own store.

But the states’ lawsuit claimed that its Android software is an open operating system that allows consumers more choices is a sham. It contended Google has set up anticompetitive barriers to ensure it distributes more than 90% of the apps on Android devices — a market share that the attorneys general argued represented an illegal monopoly.

Lawsuits the Mountain View, California, company is still fighting include a landmark case brought by the U.S. Justice Department in 2020 focused on alleged abuses of Google’s dominant search engine and its digital ad network, which generates some $100 billion in annual revenue for its corporate parent, Alphabet Inc.