The U.S. Department of Justice is considering asking a federal judge to break up Google after its ubiquitous search engine was declared an illegal monopoly, but it is just one of many possible remedies under review, according to a court filing.

In court papers filed late Tuesday, government lawyers outlined a series of potential remedies it may pursue, including restrictions on how Google’s artificial intelligence mines other websites to deliver search results, and blocking Google from paying companies like Apple billions of dollars annually to ensure that Google is the default search engine presented to consumers on gadgets like iPhones.

Tuesday’s filing is the first step in a monthslong legal process to come up with remedies that could reshape a company that’s long been synonymous with online search.

“For more than a decade, Google has controlled the most popular distribution channels, leaving rivals with little-to-no incentive to compete for users,” the antitrust enforcers wrote in the filing. “Fully remedying these harms requires not only ending Google’s control of distribution today, but also ensuring Google cannot control the distribution of tomorrow.”

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta r uled in August that Google’s search engine has been illegally exploiting the dominance of its search engine to squash competition and stifle innovation. He has outlined a timeline for a trial on the proposed remedies next spring and plans to issue a decision by August 2025.

The court filing is the first time that the government has given any indication of the types of remedies it will pursue, but under the meticulous approach ordered by Mehta, the government may ultimately opt not to pursue remedies like divestiture.

The Justice Department will conduct discovery over the coming weeks and put forth a more detailed proposal next month.

Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said in response to the filing that the Department of Justice was “already signaling requests that go far beyond the specific legal issues” in this case. “Government overreach in a fast-moving industry may have negative unintended consequences for American innovation and America’s consumers.”

Google has already said it plans to appeal Mehta’s ruling, but the tech giant must wait until he finalizes a remedy before doing so. The appeals process could take as long as five years, predicts George Hay, a law professor at Cornell University who was the chief economist for the Justice Department’s antitrust division for most of the 1970s.

During a lengthy trial in Washington, much of the evidence centered on deals Google made with other tech companies to ensure that Google is the default search engine on consumer technology. In 2021 alone, Google spent more than $26 billion to lock in those default agreements, according to trial testimony.

As a result, much of the speculation about potential remedies has focused on whether Google would be barred from making such deals. In Tuesday’s filing, lawyers referred to those distribution deals as a “starting point for addressing Google’s unlawful conduct.”

To that end, the department said it is also considering asking for structural changes to stop Google from leveraging products such as its Chrome browser, Android operating system, AI products or app store to benefit its search business.

“We’ve invested billions of dollars in Chrome and Android,” Mulholland wrote. “Breaking them off would change their business models, raise the cost of devices, and undermine Android and Google Play in their robust competition with Apple’s iPhone and App Store.”

Another proposal floated by the government allowing companies to opt out of having their information used by Google when it delivers AI-enhanced responses to consumers’ search queries.

“Google’s ability to leverage its monopoly power to feed artificial intelligence features is an emerging barrier to competition and risks further entrenching Google’s dominance,” government lawyers wrote. Google’s blog post response noted that artificial intelligence is a rapidly emerging technology that is the subject of fierce competition in the commercial market.

“There are enormous risks to the government putting its thumb on the scale of this vital industry,” Mulholland wrote.

After the government submits its more detailed proposal next month for how to tackle Google’s anticompetitive practices. Google in turn will offer its own ideas for how to make fixes in December. Prosecutors will then make their final proposal in March 2025.

Google has been facing intensifying regulatory pressure on both sides of the Atlantic, with European Union antitrust enforcers also suggesting that breaking up the company is the only way to satisfy competition concerns about its digital ad business.

Justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court said Wednesday that Gov. Tony Evers’ creative use of his expansive veto power in an attempt to lock in a school funding increase for 400 years appeared to be “extreme” and “crazy” but questioned whether and how it should be reined in.

“It does feel like the sky is the limit, the stratosphere is the limit,” Justice Jill Karofsky said during oral arguments, referring to the governor’s veto powers. “Perhaps today we are at the fork in the road ... I think we’re trying to think should we, today in 2024, start to look at this differently.”

The case, supported by the Republican-controlled Legislature, is the latest flashpoint in a decades-long fight over just how broad Wisconsin’s governor’s partial veto powers should be. The issue has crossed party lines, with Republicans and Democrats pushing for more limitations on the governor’s veto over the years.

In this case, Evers made the veto in question in 2023. His partial veto increased how much revenue K-12 public schools can raise per student by $325 a year until 2425. Evers took language that originally applied the $325 increase for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years and instead vetoed the “20” and the hyphen to make the end date 2425, more than four centuries from now.

“The veto here approaches the absurd and exceeds any reasonable understanding of legislative or voter intent in adopting the partial veto or subsequent limits,” attorneys for legal scholar Richard Briffault, of Columbia Law School, said in a filing with the court ahead of arguments.

That argument was cited throughout the oral arguments by justices and Scott Rosenow, attorney for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce Litigation Center, which handles lawsuits for the state’s largest business lobbying group and brought the case.

The court should strike down Evers’ partial veto and declare that the state constitution forbids the governor from striking digits to create a new year or to remove language to create a longer duration than the one approved by the Legislature, Rosenow argued.

Finding otherwise would give governors unlimited power to alter numbers in a budget bill, Rosenow argued.

Justices appeared to agree that limits were needed, but they grappled with where to draw the line.

When legal scholars and others look at what Wisconsin courts have allowed relative to partial vetoes, “they think it’s crazy because it is crazy,” said Justice Brian Hagedorn. “We allow governors to unilaterally create law that has not been proposed to them at all. It is a mess of this court’s making.”

The initial reaction from anyone would be that a 400-year veto is “extreme,” said Justice Rebecca Dallet, but the question is whether it’s within the governor’s authority to use the partial veto to extend the duration of dates.

“The governor is becoming the most powerful person in the state, arguably, to just make the law whatever he declares,” said Justice Rebecca Bradley.

Evers, his attorney Colin Roth argued Wednesday, was simply using a longstanding partial veto process that is allowed under the law. The court, controlled 4-3 by liberals, will issue a written ruling in the coming months.

Wisconsin’s partial veto power was created by a 1930 constitutional amendment, but it’s been weakened over the years, including in reaction to vetoes made by former governors, both Republicans and Democrats.

Voters adopted constitutional amendments in 1990 and 2008 that removed the ability to strike individual letters to make new words — the “Vanna White” veto — and the power to eliminate words and numbers in two or more sentences to create a new sentence — the “Frankenstein” veto.

The lawsuit before the court on Wednesday contends that Evers’ partial veto is barred under the 1990 constitutional amendment prohibiting the “Vanna White” veto, named the co-host of the game show Wheel of Fortune who flips letters to reveal word phrases.

But Evers argued that the “Vanna White” veto ban applies only to striking individual letters to create new words, not vetoing digits to create new numbers.

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Martin Shkreli, who was once dubbed “Pharma Bro” after jacking up the price of a lifesaving drug.

Shkreli appealed an order to return $64.6 million in profits he and his former company reaped after monopolizing the market for the medication and drastically increasing its price. His lawyers argued that the money went to his company rather than him personally.

The justices did not explain their reasoning, as is typical, and there were no noted dissents.

Prosecutors, though, said the company had agreed in a settlement to pay $40 million, and because Shkreli masterminded the scheme he should bear responsibility for repaying profits.

New York Attorney General Letitia James applauded the court’s action upholding the order, which also included a lifetime ban on Shkreli working in the pharmaceutical industry.

“This win reinforces how our state’s tough anti-fraud laws help protect New Yorkers and ensure bad actors cannot abuse their power, wealth, or influence,” she said in a statement.

Thomas Huff, a lawyer for Shkreli, said the decision was disappointing. But he also said the high court could yet overturn a lower court decision that made the $64 million penalty order possible even though Shkreli hadn’t personally gotten the money.

“If and when the Supreme Court does so, Mr. Shkreli will have a strong argument for modifying the order accordingly,” he said.

Shkreli was also ordered to forfeit the Wu-Tang Clan’s “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” the unreleased work that has been called the world’s rarest musical album. The multiplatinum hip-hop group put a single copy of the album up for auction in 2015, on the condition that it not be put to commercial use.

Shkreli was convicted of lying to investors and cheating them out of millions of dollars in two failed hedge funds he operated. Shkreli was CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals — later Vyera — when it raised the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill after obtaining exclusive rights to the decades-old drug in 2015. It treats a rare parasitic disease that strikes pregnant women, cancer patients and AIDS patients.

He defended the decision as capitalism at work, saying insurance and other programs ensured that people who need Daraprim would ultimately get it. But the move sparked outrage, from the medical community to Congress.

Shkreli was released from prison in 2022 after serving much of a seven-year sentence.

The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday halted a ruling striking down the state’s near-ban on abortions while it considers the state’s appeal.

The high court’s order came a week after a judge found that Georgia unconstitutionally prohibits abortions beyond about six weeks of pregnancy, often before women realize they’re pregnant. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled Sept. 30 that privacy rights under Georgia’s state constitution include the right to make personal healthcare decisions.

The state Supreme Court put McBurney’s ruling on hold at the request of Republican state Attorney General Chris Carr, whose office is appealing.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice John J. Ellington argued that the case “should not be predetermined in the State’s favor before the appeal is even docketed.”

“The State should not be in the business of enforcing laws that have been determined to violate fundamental rights guaranteed to millions of individuals under the Georgia Constitution,” Ellington wrote. “The `status quo’ that should be maintained is the state of the law before the challenged laws took effect.”

Clare Bartlett, executive director of the Georgia Life Alliance, called high court’s decision “appropriate,” fearing that without it, women from other states would begin coming to Georgia for surgical abortions.

“There’s no there’s no right to privacy in the abortion process because there’s another individual involved,” Bartlett said. She added: “It goes back to protecting those who are the most vulnerable and can’t speak for themselves.”

Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, said the state Supreme Court had “sided with anti-abortion extremists.” Her group is among the plaintiffs challenging the state law.

“Every minute this harmful six-week abortion ban is in place, Georgians suffer,” Simpson said in a statement. “Denying our community members the lifesaving care they deserve jeopardizes their lives, safety, and health — all for the sake of power and control over our bodies.”

Leaders of carafem, an Atlanta abortion provider that had planned to expand its services after McBurney’s ruling, expressed dismay at the law’s reinstatement.

“Carafem will continue to offer abortion services following the letter of the law,” said Melissa Grant, the provider’s chief operating officer. “But we remain angry and disappointed and hope that eventually people will come back to a more sensible point of view on this issue that aligns with the people who need care.”

A court order that says hospitals cannot federally be required to provide pregnancy terminations when they violate a Texas abortion ban will stay for now, the Supreme Court said Monday.

The decision is another setback for opponents of Texas’ abortion ban, which for two years has withstood multiple legal challenges, including from women who had serious pregnancy complications and have been turned away by doctors.

It left Texas as the only state where the Biden administration is unable to enforce its interpretation of a federal law in an effort to ensure women still have access to emergency abortions when their health or life is at risk.

The justices did not detail their reasoning for keeping in place a lower court order, and there were no publicly noted dissents. Texas had asked the justices to leave the order in place while the Biden administration had asked the justices to throw it out.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called the decision “a major victory.”

The Biden administration argues that a federal law, called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, requires emergency rooms to provide abortions if a pregnant patient’s health or life is at serious risk, even in states where the procedure is banned. The law only applies to emergency rooms that receive Medicare funding, which most hospitals do.

The Supreme Court decision comes weeks before a presidential election in which Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has put abortion at the center of her campaign, attacking Republican challenger Donald Trump for appointing judges to the high court who overturned nationwide abortion rights in 2022.

“I will never stop fighting for a woman’s right to emergency medical care — and to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade so that women in every state have access to the care they need,” Harris said on social media Monday evening.

Texas’ abortion ban has also been a centerpiece of Democratic U.S. Rep. Colin Allred ’s challenge against Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cuz for his seat. At a campaign event over the weekend in Fort Worth, Texas, hundreds of Allred’s supporters broke out in raucous applause when he vowed to protect a woman’s right to an abortion. “When I’m in the Senate, we’re going to restore Roe v. Wade,” Allred said.

At a separate event the same day, in a nearby suburb, Cruz outlined a litany of criticisms against Allred, but didn’t bring up the abortion law.

Katie Glenn Daniel, the state policy director of SBA Pro-Life America, applauded the Supreme Court decision and pointed to data showing Texas doctors have been able to provide an average of about five abortions per month to save a patient’s life or health.

Still, complaints of pregnant women in medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms in Texas and elsewhere have spiked as hospitals grapple with whether standard care could violate strict state laws against abortion. Several Texas women have lodged complaints against hospitals for not terminating their failing and dangerous pregnancies because of the state’s ban. In some cases, women lost reproductive organs.

In asking the Supreme Court to toss out the lower court decision, the administration pointed to a similar case from Idaho earlier this year in which the justices narrowly allowed emergency abortions to resume while a lawsuit continues. At the time the Idaho case began, the state had an exception for the life, but not the health, of a woman.

Texas said its case is different, however, because the law provides some exceptions if a pregnant patient’s health is at risk.

Texas pointed to a state Supreme Court ruling that said doctors do not have to wait until a woman’s life is in immediate danger to provide an abortion legally. Doctors, though, have said the Texas law is dangerously vague, and a medical board has refused to list all the conditions that qualify for an exception.

The Supreme Court will hear a challenge Tuesday to a Biden administration regulation on ghost guns, the difficult-to-trace weapons with an exponentially increased link to crime in recent years.

The rule is focused on gun kits that are sold online and can be assembled into a functioning weapon in less than 30 minutes. The finished weapons don’t have serial numbers, making them nearly impossible to trace.

The regulation came after the number of ghost guns seized by police around the country soared, going from fewer than 4,000 recovered by law enforcement in 2018 to nearly 20,000 in 2021, according to Justice Department data.

Finalized after an executive action from President Joe Biden, the rule requires companies to treat the kits like other firearms by adding serial numbers, running background checks and verifying that buyers are 21 or older. The number of ghost guns has since flattened out or declined in several major cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Baltimore, according to court documents.

But manufacturers and gun-rights groups challenged the rule in court, arguing it’s long been legal to sell gun parts to hobbyists and that most people who commit crimes use traditional guns.

They say the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives overstepped its authority. “Congress is the body that gets to decide how to address any risks that might arise from a particular product,” a group of more than two dozen GOP-leaning states supporting the challengers wrote in court documents.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas agreed, striking down the rule in 2023. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld his decision.

The administration, on the other hand, argues the law allows the government to regulate weapons that “may readily be converted” to shoot. The 5th Circuit’s decision would allow anyone to “buy a kit online and assemble a fully functional gun in minutes — no background check, records, or serial number required. The result would be a flood of untraceable ghost guns into our nation’s communities,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote.

The Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration last year, allowing the regulation to go into effect by a 5-4 vote. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined with the court’s three liberal members to form the majority.

Google lost its final legal challenge on Tuesday against a European Union penalty for giving its own shopping recommendations an illegal advantage over rivals in search results, ending a long-running antitrust case that came with a whopping fine.

The European Union’s Court of Justice upheld a lower court’s decision, rejecting the company’s appeal against the 2.4 billion euro ($2.7 billion) penalty from the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s top antitrust enforcer.

“By today’s judgment, the Court of Justice dismisses the appeal and thus upholds the judgment of the General Court,” the court said in a press release summarizing its decision.

The commission punished the Silicon Valley giant in 2017 for unfairly directing visitors to its own Google Shopping service to the detriment of competitors. It was one of three multibillion-euro fines that the commission imposed on Google in the previous decade as Brussels started ramping up its crackdown on the tech industry.

“We are disappointed with the decision of the Court, which relates to a very specific set of facts,” Google said in a brief statement.  The company said it made changes in 2017 to comply with the commission’s decision requiring it to treat competitors equally. It started holding auctions for shopping search listings that it would bid for alongside other comparison shopping services.

“Our approach has worked successfully for more than seven years, generating billions of clicks for more than 800 comparison shopping services,” Google said.

At the same time, the company appealed the decision to the courts. But the EU General Court, the tribunal’s lower section, rejected its challenge in 2021 and the Court of Justice’s adviser later recommended rejecting the appeal.

European consumer group BEUC hailed the court’s decision, saying it shows how the bloc’s competition law “remains highly relevant” in digital markets.

“Google harmed millions of European consumers by ensuring that rival comparison shopping services were virtually invisible,” director general Agustín Reyna said. “Google’s illegal practices prevented consumers from accessing potentially cheaper prices and useful product information from rival comparison shopping services on all sorts of products, from clothes to washing machines.”

Google is still appealing the other two EU antitrust penalties, which involved its Android mobile operating system and AdSense advertising platform. The company was dealt a setback in the Android case when the EU General Court upheld the commission’s 4.125 billion euro fine in a 2022 decision. Its initial appeal against a 1.49 billion euro fine in the AdSense case has yet to be decided.

Those three cases foreshadowed expanded efforts by regulators worldwide to crack down on the tech industry. The EU has since opened more investigations into Big Tech companies and drafted new laws to clean up social media platforms and regulate artificial intelligence.

Google is now facing particular pressure over its lucrative digital advertising business. In a federal antitrust trial that began Monday, the U.S. Department of Justice is alleging the company holds a monopoly in the “ad tech” industry.

British competition regulators accused Google last week of abusing its dominance in ad tech while the EU is carrying out its own investigation.