• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, 8 hours ago

Siding against Mike Huckabee, a federal judge has refused to revive claims against Meta Platforms over ads that misappropriated the former Arizona governor's name and image to sell CBD gummies.

In a ruling issued Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Williams in Delaware reiterated his prior finding that Huckabee's allegations, even if proven true, would not show that Meta knew it was hosting fake ads.

The decision comes in a lawsuit brought by Huckabee last July, when he sued Meta over phony endorsements in ads -- including one that linked to a fake Fox News site. The complaint included a claim that Meta violated an Arkansas right-of-publicity law that gives people the right to control the commercial use of their names and images.

Williams initially dismissed Huckabee's claims last November, ruling that his complaint lacked allegations that "would allow the reasonable inference that Meta had any 'fault.'"

Huckabee, currently U.S. Ambassador to Israel, then sought to file an amended complaint alleging that Meta was at fault for the ads because it knew CBD advertisers had misappropriated other public figures' identities.

“For more than four years now, Meta has known that public figures, such as the governor, have had their names, images, and likenesses used to promote CBD products without their knowledge and consent,” Huckabee alleged in the proposed amended complaint, adding that author J.K. Rowling, actress Jennifer Aniston and skateboarder Tony Hawk are among the people to publicly condemn the wrongful use of their images in phony CBD endorsements.

Williams said in Tuesday's ruling that the proposed amended complaint still lacked the kinds of allegations that would support a "reasonable inference" that Meta knew the ads misappropriated Huckabee's identity.

"That Facebook, 'one of the most dominant social media companies in the world' ... has previously published a handful of images that were used without authorization hardly allows for the reasonable inference that Meta knew that the images of plaintiff were also used without authorization," he wrote.