Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a civil lawsuit accusing the privacy-minded company of deploying its virtual assistant Siri to eavesdrop on people using its iPhone and other trendy devices.

The proposed settlement filed Tuesday in an Oakland, California, federal court would resolve a 5-year-old lawsuit revolving around allegations that Apple surreptitiously activated Siri to record conversations through iPhones and other devices equipped with the virtual assistant for more than a decade.

The alleged recordings occurred even when people didn't seek to activate the virtual assistant with the trigger words, "Hey, Siri." Some of the recorded conversations were then shared with advertisers in an attempt to sell their products to consumers more likely to be interested in the goods and services, the lawsuit asserted.

The allegations about a snoopy Siri contradicted Apple's long-running commitment to protect the privacy of its customers — a crusade that CEO Tim Cook has often framed as a fight to preserve "a fundamental human right."

Apple isn't acknowledging any wrongdoing in the settlement, which still must be approved by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White. Lawyers in the case have proposed scheduling a Feb. 14 court hearing in Oakland to review the terms.

If the settlement is approved, tens of millions of consumers who owned iPhones and other Apple devices from Sept. 17, 2014, through the end of last year could file claims. Each consumer could receive up to $20 per Siri-equipped device covered by the settlement, although the payment could be reduced or increased, depending on the volume of claims. Only 3% to 5% of eligible consumers are expected to file claims, according to estimates in court documents.

The settlement represents a sliver of the $705 billion in profits that Apple has pocketed since September 2014. It's also a fraction of the roughly $1.5 billion that the lawyers representing consumers had estimated Apple could been required to pay if the company had been found of violating wiretapping and other privacy laws had the case gone to a trial.

The attorneys who filed the lawsuit may seek up to $29.6 million from the settlement fund to cover their fees and other expenses, according to court documents.

The Supreme Court is allowing a class-action lawsuit that accuses Nvidia of misleading investors about its past dependence on selling computer chips for the mining of volatile cryptocurrency to proceed.

The court’s decision Wednesday comes the same week that China said it is investigating the the microchip company over suspected violations of Chinese anti-monopoly laws. The justices heard arguments four weeks ago in Nvidia’s bid to shut down the lawsuit, then decided that they were wrong to take up the case in the first place. They dismissed the company’s appeal, leaving in place an appellate ruling allowing the case to go forward.

At issue was a 2018 suit led by a Swedish investment management firm. It followed a dip in the profitability of cryptocurrency, which caused Nvidia’s revenues to fall short of projections and led to a 28% drop in the company’s stock price.

Nvidia had argued that the investors’ lawsuit should be thrown out because it does not measure up to a 1995 law, the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, that is intended to bar frivolous complaints. A district court judge had dismissed the complaint before the federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that it could go forward. The Biden administration backed the investors at the Supreme Court.

“This is a win for corporate accountability. When corporations mislead shareholders, they undermine trust in our markets. Ensuring that investors can seek justice is essential to preserving fairness and transparency,” Deepak Gupta, who represented the investors at Supreme Court, said in a statement.

In 2022, Nvidia, which is based in Santa Clara, California, paid a $5.5 million fine to settle charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission that it failed to disclose that cryptomining was a significant source of revenue growth from the sale of graphics processing units that were produced and marketed for gaming. The company did not admit to any wrongdoing as part of the settlement.

Nvidia’s recent performance has been spectacular. Even after the news of the China investigation, its share price is up 180% this year.

Nvidia has led the artificial intelligence sector to become one of the stock market’s biggest companies, as tech giants continue to spend heavily on the company’s chips and data centers needed to train and operate their AI systems.

The lawsuit is one of two high court cases that involved class-action lawsuits against tech companies. The justices also dismissed an appeal from Facebook parent Meta that sought to end to a multibillion-dollar class action investors’ lawsuit stemming from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.

The Supreme Court is allowing a multibillion-dollar class action investors’ lawsuit to proceed against Facebook parent Meta, stemming from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.

The justices heard arguments in November in Meta’s bid to shut down the lawsuit. On Friday, they decided that they were wrong to take up the case in the first place.

The high court dismissed the company’s appeal, leaving in place an appellate ruling allowing the case to go forward.

Investors allege that Meta did not fully disclose the risks that Facebook users’ personal information would be misused by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump ’s first successful Republican presidential campaign in 2016.

Inadequacy of the disclosures led to two significant price drops in the price of the company’s shares in 2018, after the public learned about the extent of the privacy scandal, the investors say.

Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the company was disappointed by the court’s action. “The plaintiff’s claims are baseless and we will continue to defend ourselves as this case is considered by the District Court,” Stone said in an emailed statement.

Meta already has paid a $5.1 billion fine and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users. Cambridge Analytica had ties to Trump political strategist Steve Bannon. It had paid a Facebook app developer for access to the personal information of about 87 million Facebook users. That data was then used to target U.S. voters during the 2016 campaign.

The lawsuit is one of two high court cases involving class-action lawsuits against tech companies. The justices also are wrestling with whether to shut down a class action against Nvidia. Investors say the company misled them about its dependence on selling computer chips for the mining of volatile cryptocurrency.

Democrats sued Kansas officials on Monday over a Republican redistricting law that costs the state’s only Democrat in Congress some of the territory in her Kansas City-area district that she carries by wide margins in elections.

A team of attorneys led by Democratic attorney Marc Elias’ firm filed the lawsuit in Wyandotte County District Court in the Kansas City area. Elias has been involved in lawsuits in multiple states, including Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio, and he promised that the new Kansas map would be challenged when the GOP-controlled Legislature on Wednesday overrode Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of it.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of five voters and a Kansas voting-rights group, Loud Light. The defendants are the elections commissioner for Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, the state’s top elections official.

Kansas is part of a broader national battle over redrawing congressional districts. Republicans hope to recapture a U.S. House majority in this year’s elections, and both parties are watching states’ redistricting efforts because they could help either pick up or defend individual seats.

The Kansas redistricting law removes the northern part of Kansas City, Kansas, from the 3rd District that U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids represents and puts it in the neighboring 2nd District, which includes the state capital of Topeka but also rural communities across eastern Kansas. Kansas City is among Republican-leaning Kansas’ few Democratic strongholds.

Elias has said the GOP map for Kansas is “blatantly unconstitutional.” Democrats argued that it amounts to partisan gerrymandering aimed at costing Davids’ her seat, while diluting the clout of Black and Hispanic voters by cutting their numbers in her district. They also have argued that the map is unacceptable because it fails to keep the core of the state’s side of the Kansas City area in a single district.

The Supreme Court is siding with Republicans to prevent Wisconsin from counting mailed ballots that are received after Election Day.

In a 5-3 order, the justices on Monday refused to reinstate a lower court order that called for mailed ballots to be counted if they are received up to six days after the Nov. 3 election. A federal appeals court had already put that order on hold.

The three liberal justices dissented from the order that the court issued just before the Senate started voting on Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination.

Chief Justice John Roberts last week joined the liberals to preserve a Pennsylvania state court order extending the absentee ballot deadline but voted the other way in the Wisconsin case, which has moved through federal courts.

“Different bodies of law and different precedents govern these two situations and require, in these particular circumstances, that we allow the modification of election rules in Pennsylvania but not Wisconsin,” Roberts wrote.

Democrats argued that the flood of absentee ballots and other challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic makes it necessary to extend the period in which ballots can be counted. Wisconsin is one of the nation’s hot spots for COVID-19, with hospitals treating a record high number of patients with the disease.

Republicans opposed the extension, saying that voters have plenty of opportunities to cast their ballots by the close of polls on Election Day and that the rules should not be changed so close to the election.

Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler responded to the ruling by pledging Democrats would be “dialing up a huge voter education campaign” to prod roughly 360,000 people who hadn’t yet returned absentee ballots to hand-deliver them by 8 p.m. on Election Day, or to vote in person.

State Republican Party Chairman Andrew Hitt praised the ruling.

“Absentee voting in Wisconsin is extremely easy and hundreds of thousands of people have done it already — last-minute attempts to change election laws only cause more voter confusion and erode the integrity of our elections,” he said in a statement.

The justices often say nothing, or very little, about the reasons for their votes in these emergency cases, but on Monday, four justices wrote opinions totaling 35 pages to lay out their competing rationales.

Medical marijuana producers in New Mexico can claim a tax deduction for prescription medication, a move that could affect prices for thousands of enrolled patients, according to a state Court of Appeals ruling.

The 11-page ruling means lawmakers must soon set aside funding to cover the tax claims, which could carry a multimillion-dollar price tag for the state Taxation and Revenue Department.

The agency has reviewed the ruling and is weighing legal options, tax department officials said. The department has until Feb. 27 to appeal the ruling.

Medical marijuana providers paid about $24 million in gross receipt taxes during an almost three-year period, officials said. Those taxes are paid by providers but usually passed on to patients, who could see a drop in prices for medical cannabis products because of the ruling, department officials said.

Tax claims could range from several hundred thousand dollars to several million dollars depending on the producer, officials said.

In the ruling, the Court of Appeals determined medical marijuana meets the definition of a prescription drug under the state’s tax code because physicians are required to certify that patients have a qualifying condition before they can enroll in the program.

A civil rights group says JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay $5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by male employees who say they were denied additional paid parental leave between 2011 and 2017.

The settlement was announced Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union and the national law firm Outten & Golden.

Chase employee Derek Rotondo filed an equal opportunity claim in 2017 when he tried to get 14 additional paid weeks after his son was born. He was told by Chase that while mothers are eligible for 16 weeks as primary caregivers, non-primary caregivers were only eligible for two weeks.

Chase adopted a gender neutral policy after Rotondo made his claim.

A Chase spokesman welcomed the agreement and thanked Rotondo for raising the issue.