Today, TechFreedom filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to reverse a district court order that refused to dismiss a lawsuit against app stores. The lawsuit accuses the app stores of running illegal gambling services. But the app stores merely provide payment processing on a neutral basis, including to apps that allegedly violate gambling laws. The plaintiffs seek to subject online services to a form of liability that their offline counterparts have never faced.
“The plaintiffs want to create a cause of action out of thin air,” said Corbin K. Barthold, Director of Appellate Litigation at TechFreedom. “They allege at most that app stores aid and abet apps that are themselves allegedly illegal. But none of the laws they invoke permits aiding-and-abetting liability. Such liability exists only where a legislature creates it. Otherwise we are governed not by legislators, but by plaintiffs’ lawyers.”
“In any event, the app stores have done nothing wrong,” Barthold continued. “Three recent Supreme Court decisions confirm—each by a vote of 9-0, no less—that a defendant who provides a neutral, generally available service to the public is not an aider and abettor merely because that service is misused by some customers. Social-media platforms are not liable for hosting terrorists. Gun manufacturers are not liable for selling guns through ordinary channels. Internet service providers are not liable for supplying access to copyright infringers. And so: app stores are not liable for processing payments.”
“The app stores do not design the casino apps, operate the games, set the odds, or touch the digital chips,” Barthold concluded. “They simply offer the same standardized payment service to every developer on the platform. To call that aiding and abetting would be to impose secondary liability on the everyday provision of general commercial services—exactly the result the Supreme Court has thrice forbidden.”
The cases are Wilkinson, et al. v. Meta Platforms, Inc., No. 25-7916 (9th Cir) and Custodero, et al. v. Apple Inc., No. 25-7917 (9th Cir).
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Find this brief and release on our website, and share it on Twitter and Bluesky. We can be reached for comment at media@techfreedom.org. Read our related work, including:
- Tech Policy Podcast: Social Media on Trial (Feb. 26, 2026)
- Amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to strike down a law letting the FCC impose civil penalties without a jury trial (Feb. 25, 2026)
- Amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to preserve the independence of the FTC and other traditional multimember agencies (Nov. 24, 2025)
- Amicus brief urging the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to block a lawsuit attacking Meta’s social media design features (Oct. 28, 2025)
- Amicus brief urging the Ninth Circuit to protect email spam filtering from frivolous lawsuits (May 2, 2025)
- Amicus brief urging the Third Circuit to grant full-court review of a deeply incorrect panel decision gutting Section 230 (Oct. 8, 2024)
- Our Supreme Court amicus brief in Moody v. NetChoice (Dec. 7, 2023)
- Amicus brief urging Ninth Circuit to uphold Section 230 protections for hosting casino-style gaming apps (July 28, 2023)
- Our Supreme Court amicus brief in Gonzalez v. Google (Jan. 18, 2023)
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