• by Wendy Davis , 3 hours ago

Siding against Meta Platforms, a federal judge ruled late last week that former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee can proceed with a lawsuit over Facebook ads that made it appear as if he endorsed CBD gummies.

Huckabee, currently U.S. ambassador to Israel, claims Meta violated Arkansas's misappropriation law, the Frank Broyles Publicity Rights Protection Act.

That law, named for a former University of Arkansas football coach, gives state residents the right to control the commercial use of their names and images.

Meta recently argued to U.S. District Judge Gregory Williams in Delaware that the allegations in Huckabee's complaint, even if proven true, wouldn't show Meta itself used Huckabee's name or likeness for its own commercial benefit.

"The only commercial benefit that Meta is alleged to have received was revenue it earned as a distributor of the third-party content, which is unrelated to the contents of the challenged advertisements and the alleged appropriation of plaintiff’s name and likeness," the platform argued last month in a written filing.

Williams rejected that argument, writing that Huckabee's complaint "adequately alleges commercial use."

The judge elaborated that the complaint included allegations that Meta "sells advertisements to support its operations, accepts payments so that certain advertisements appear more prominently on the feeds of its users," and "approved and maintained the challenged advertisements."

Earlier in the case Williams dismissed Huckabee's claim, ruling that the allegations, even if true, wouldn't show that Meta knew the ads were fake.

But in June, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling and reinstated the lawsuit, pointing to three allegations regarding the ads that, if true, could have put Meta on notice that the endorsements were phony.

The first was that the ads were "premised on a development that Huckabee, a public figure and 'lifelong opponent of marijuana and its derivatives -- i.e., CBD,' ... is now endorsing CBD products."

The second was that Facebook previously "hosted similar, fraudulent CBD advertisements using the name, image, and likeness of other media personalities, and that news outlets reported on those instances."

The third allegation was that one of the ads linked to a fake Fox News site.

"That bogus link, when coupled with the unusual association of Huckabee and CBD and the prior fraudulent CBD advertisements on Facebook, suffices for allegations that Meta was plausibly 'aware of facts or circumstances' from which the advertisements’ misuse of Huckabee’s name, image, or likeness was 'apparent,'" Circuit Judge Peter Phipps wrote in an opinion joined by Judges Emil Bove and Arianna Freeman.

The judges returned the matter to Williams for additional proceedings, including arguments regarding Meta's contention that Huckabee's allegations would not warrant a conclusion that it made "commercial" use of his name or image.