• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, July 3, 2017

A federal judge has slammed the California Attorney General for demanding that Amazon disclose a host of confidential information -- including communications it had with digital rights groups.

Attorney General Xavier Becerra's request came in the context of a legal battle over a new California law, AB 1687, that requires IMDb.com to delete actors' ages at their request.

Earlier this year, U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria issued a preliminary injunction against the law, on the grounds that the measure violates IMDb's free speech rights. While that ruling stayed enforcement of the law, it didn't definitively end the case.

Instead, both the Attorney General and Amazon are entitled to submit written arguments for permanent injunctions. Becerra, backed by the Screen Actors Guild, argued in court papers that he is entitled to more information from Amazon before filing that next round of papers.

Among other items, Becerra and the actors' group requested that IMDb.com turn over public survey results, marketing studies and ad materials, as well as communications between IMDb and digital rights groups that supported the site in court -- including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, The First Amendment Coalition, The Media Law Resource Center, The Wikimedia Foundation, and The Center For Democracy & Technology.

Chhabria rejected those requests. "It's difficult to conceive of a reason, other than harassment, for seeking communications between IMDb and the people who filed ... briefs on IMDb's behalf," he wrote.

"It's one thing for a legislature to enact a speech restriction without an adequate justification. That sometimes happens," he added. "It's another thing for the government's lawyers to double down on their client's constitutional error by imposing irrelevant, burdensome, even harassing discovery obligations on a party that seeks only to vindicate its First Amendment rights in court."

Lawmakers passed the AB 1687 in hopes of combatting age discrimination against actors. The law requires providers of “commercial online entertainment employment" services -- a description that appears to apply only to IMDb.com -- to remove information about paying subscribers' ages at their request.