Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Sina Science and Technology News Beijing time on October 21 morning news, it is reported that there is little chance for Meta Platforms to ban FTC Chairman Lina Khan (Lina Khan) from participating in FTC's planned acquisition of Within Unlimited, a virtual reality (VR) content developer, by Meta.

But that didn't stop Meta from continuing its Khan disqualification campaign, with recent evidence this week that the company filed a document with U.S. District Judge Edward Davila of San Jose, Calif., who is overseeing a preliminary injunction application by the Federal Trade Commission to block Meida's acquisition of Within.

The background is that Meta and its predecessor, Facebook, have been arguing for more than a year that Khan's speeches, articles and testimonies before joining FTC showed her hostility to Facebook and other large technology companies, so she cannot be expected to lead the agency to make impartial decisions after becoming chairman of the FTC.

For Meta, however, this is an extremely complex and multi-pronged effort. Last October, Meta formally asked Khan to evade the case for the first time because she cast a decisive vote when FTC filed an amendment complaint in federal court, accusing Facebook of violating antitrust laws in its acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp. FTC rejected the withdrawal request, noting that its case against Facebook was brought in federal court, not in administrative proceedings, so the company would be fully constitutionally protected by the trial judge.

Meta subsequently argued that because of Khan's bias, the court should reject FTC's amended complaint because she cast a decisive vote for the committee to resume proceedings. U.S. district Judge James James Boasberg in Washington, D.C., rejected this argument in January last year. The judge ruled that Khan was more of a prosecutor than a judge when he voted in favor of FTC's amendment appeal. Bosberg said that by the standards of federal prosecutors, her previous policy views on so-called large technology monopolies could not lead the court to ask Khan to evade.

But now Meta believes that its lawsuit to acquire Within should apply to different standards. In this lawsuit, FTC also filed an administrative lawsuit, claiming that the proposed deal violated federal antitrust law and filed a lawsuit in federal court to prohibit Meta from completing the transaction. In a withdrawal application filed with FTC last July, Meta, a lawyer from Weil, Gotshal & Manges, said Khan would play the role of a judge in any administrative case brought by FTC, so the fairness of the case would be undermined by "the adverse impact of her established attitude towards Meta".

Meta subsequently sought to suspend administrative proceedings, arguing that Khan's involvement undermined the legality of the case.

Khan has explicitly refused to withdraw from the case. According to a letter from FTC to Weijia Law firm in administrative proceedings on October 6, Khan has decided to remain involved in the case under FTC's withdrawal rules, and this decision will now be reviewed by other members of the committee.

Meta informed Davila of this procedural progress in a preliminary injunction document submitted this week, noting that it may be related to FTC's motion to withdraw Meta's active defense.

It is reported that Meta will almost certainly lose the challenge of evading the issue at the plenary meeting of the committee. FTC rules require that decisions that individual members do not evade can only be overturned by the majority of other members. At present, after the departure of Republican commissioner Noah Phillips (Noah Phillips), there are only three FTC members besides Khan. Two of the three are unlikely to vote to kick Khan out of the Meta merger.

In response, Meta issued a statement on its efforts to ask Khan to evade. "We have previously expressed concern about the impartiality of Chairman Khan in matters involving Meta, and we share the same concern in this case," the company said. A spokesman for FTC introduced the agency's avoidance rules.

So why is Meida working so hard on a problem that has already lost once and is likely to lose again?

Louis Riley (Louis Virelli), a professor at Stetson University Law School, said the company thought it had reason to ask Khan to be heard in the case because they believed that Chairman FTC acted as the adjudicator in administrative proceedings. However, the internal avoidance standard of the FTC is "very vague", leaving a lot of room for the committee's discretion. Riley said that if Meta eventually lost in FTC's administrative case, they might cite Khan's refusal to withdraw as one of his grounds of appeal, but the threshold for such an appeal is very high. Riley correctly predicted last year that Meta would fail in Bosberg's case.

At the same time, Virelli said, Meta could object to the federal court's preliminary injunction on the grounds of its protest against Khan's continued involvement in administrative proceedings.

The company paid a lot of legal fees in two parallel cases, thus playing a game in this multi-dimensional chess game. When the preliminary injunction case is heard in December, we will know more about whether the company's strategy has paid off.

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