The US Department of Justice has asked the court to reconsider a recent ruling that would allow Apple to pursue records from 14 federal agencies in its antitrust case. Here are the details.

Earlier this month, retired federal judge Jose Linares, who is serving as a special discovery master in the case, rejected the government’s effort to block Apple from seeking documents from 14 federal agencies as part of discovery in the DOJ’s 2024 antitrust lawsuit against the company.

According to Apple, if these documents show that the agencies chose its products because of their privacy, security, or other features, they could help undermine the DOJ’s antitrust claims.

The reason this dispute reached the special master is that the government argued that the agencies are not involved in the case and that Apple’s requests are irrelevant, overly broad, and risk disclosing privileged, classified, or national-security-sensitive information.

Judge Linares ultimately sided with Apple, finding that the requested documents were relevant and that the government had not sufficiently supported its objections.

Now, the DOJ, backed by declarations from officials at several federal agencies and offices, has asked Judge Linares to reconsider that decision. Notably, neither the Commerce Department nor the FTC submitted a declaration.

In its motion, the DOJ argues that Linares applied the wrong legal standard by treating the agencies as parties to the case rather than non-parties entitled to greater protection from discovery.

From the filing:

Federal agencies are not automatically subject to “party” discovery any time the United States files a case; rather, courts must perform a fact-specific assessment of the relationship of a federal agency to each case.3 The Order did not perform the correct fact-specific assessments in concluding that none of the 14 federal agencies are entitled to the greater protection afforded to non-parties under Rule 45. That was clear error.

The DOJ says Linares did not conduct that agency-by-agency assessment before concluding that all 14 agencies were subject to the broader discovery obligations imposed on parties.

Alongside the reconsideration motion, the DOJ and the agencies have asked the court to confirm that their deadline to appeal Linares’s ruling will remain paused until he decides whether to reverse it.

If Linares stands by his original decision, the appeal period would then begin, allowing the government to challenge the ruling before the district judge overseeing the case.

It is worth noting that this dispute is unfolding against the backdrop of a recent report that Apple and the DOJ are discussing a potential settlement that could bring the broader antitrust case to an end. You can read more about that here.

You can read the DOJ’s filing below:

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