A little more than a week after Google and Texas told the state’s supreme court they were in settlement negotiations that could end litigation in a consumer protection lawsuit, Texas on Friday afternoon announced a $1.375 billion settlement with the tech giant.
Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a statement calling the settlement of the state Deceptive Trade Practices Act claims “a major win for Texans’ privacy” and said it “tells companies that they will pay for abusing our trust.”
“In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law,” the statement reads. “For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry through their products and services.”
Texas, which filed suit in January 2022, has accused Google of violating state law when it made certain representations about how user location information and browsing history data is collected. Victoria County District Judge Eli E. Garza denied Google’s request to dismiss the suit on jurisdictional grounds in February 2023.
From there, Google took its argument to the Thirteenth Court of Appeals in Corpus Christi, and that court was more sympathetic to the argument. In January a three-justice panel determined that a lack of personal and specific jurisdiction doomed Texas’ lawsuit.
“From our appraisal of the record before us, appellant’s activity in Texas compared with its nationwide and worldwide activity does not support a conclusion that appellant has made Texas its home,” the panel wrote. “Appellee’s allegations are insufficient to meet its initial burden. Moreover, without more, these allegations effectively negate the trial court’s general jurisdiction. Appellant cannot be ‘essentially at home’ in every foreign jurisdiction where it operates.”
Texas filed a petition for review with the Texas Supreme Court, seeking to revive the lawsuit, in February. The following month, Google told the court it wouldn’t file a response to the petition unless the court requested one.
On April 11, Texas filed a letter with the state’s high court urging review, arguing some of the dire consequences it said would follow in the wake of the dismissal of its lawsuit against Google had already come to fruition.
“That prediction is already proving true,” Texas wrote. “In just three short months since the Thirteenth Court of Appeals issued its decision, defendants in at least two separate enforcement actions brought by the State under Texas consumer-protection statutes cited Google to argue that they are not amenable to specific jurisdiction in Texas.”
Those other two cases, according to the letter, are State of Texas v. 3M et al. in the Northern District of Texas and State of Texas v. The Allstate Corp. et al. in Montgomery County District Court.
But then on April 30, the parties asked the Texas Supreme Court to abate the case for 30 days because they were “engaged in productive settlement negotiations and require additional time to effectuate that resolution.”
The Texas Supreme Court issued an order abating the case Friday morning, hours before the settlement was announced. Much of the four-paragraph press release from Paxton’s office notes the size of the settlement compared to others reached against Google, calling it the “highest recovery nationwide against Google for any attorney general’s enforcement of state privacy laws.”
The release also notes the settlement is almost a billion dollars more than the $391 million settlement a coalition of 40 states reached in a location tracking suit against Google in November 2022.
In July, Texas settled a facial recognition data lawsuit with Meta for $1.4 billion.
Texas is represented by Kristina Williams, Joseph M. Graham Jr., Jeffrey S. Wolff, Marc B. Collier, Julie N. Searle, Josh Owings and Chris Cooke of Norton Rose Fulbright, Kevin D. Cullen of Cullen, Carsner, Seerden and Cullen, Ronald B. Walker of Walker Keeling, and Jacob Beach of the office of the attorney general.
Google is represented by Stephen E. McConnico, Steven J. Wingard, Robyn B. Hargrove, John W. Ellis, Bryan D. Lauer and Shelby Hart-Armstrong of Scott Douglass & McConnico, Jim Cole of Cole, Cole, Easley & Sciba and Benedict Y. Hur, Simona Agnolucci, Jonathan Patchen, Eduardo Santacana, Joshua Anderson and Harris Mateen of Willkie Farr & Gallagher.
The case number is 25-0172.