A federal court on Friday dismissed Yelp Inc.’s motion to block Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton from penalizing the company for posting notices stating that pregnancy resource centers provide limited medical services.
A “Younger abstention,” named for a 1971 Supreme Court ruling, states that federal courts must abstain from hearing civil claims brought by parties who are facing related actions by state officials in state court.
The judge ruled the abstention is appropriate because the state proceedings are still ongoing and implicate an important state interest, which is protecting Texas consumers from “deceptive trade practices.”
“Paxton argues that these elements are met; Yelp does not contest that they are; and the court concludes that Paxton is correct. There is an ongoing state proceeding,” Judge Thompson stated.
Mr. Paxton, a Republican, sued Yelp on Sept. 28, 2023, for allegedly misleading consumers by posting notices on its business review website stating that crisis pregnancy centers provide limited medical services.
His lawsuit came a day after Yelp preemptively sued him in federal court in San Francisco to ward off his action. Yelp argued that its notices were true, not misleading, and were protected as free speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution.
According to the court document, Yelp argued that Mr. Paxton brought the case in bad faith. But the judge said the company failed to provide concrete evidence to support this claim.
“Though [Paxton] brought the case after Yelp filed in this court, he had advised Yelp that he might sue one week before Yelp filed. And Yelp has not pointed to concrete evidence of Paxton’s desire to rebound from his near-impeachment or to curry favor among Texas voters. Nor has Yelp pointed to a history of harassment from Paxton,” the judge wrote.
The Yelp Notice
Based in San Francisco, Yelp Inc. is a developer and operator of a website and mobile app that uses crowdsourcing to rate and collect consumer reviews of businesses.In August 2022, Yelp began posting a notice on pregnancy resource centers’ pages.
“This is a Crisis Pregnancy Center. Crisis Pregnancy Centers typically provide limited medical services and may not have licensed medical professionals onsite,” the notice stated.
In his lawsuit, filed in the district court of Bastrop County, Texas, Mr. Paxton accused the California-based company of violating a Texas law against unfair business practices.
“Yelp appended language to all pregnancy resource center Yelp pages, indicating that those pages ‘typically provide limited medical services and may not have licensed medical professionals onsite.’ That disclaimer is misleading and often untrue because pregnancy resource centers frequently do provide medical services with licensed medical professionals onsite,” Mr. Paxton stated at the time.
“Yelp’s disclaimer is particularly deceptive because it is in fact abortion providers that often do not have licensed medical professionals onsite, but the company did not append this disclaimer to abortion providers’ Yelp pages,” he added.
In February 2023, Mr. Paxton and other Republican state attorneys general told Yelp the notice was misleading because it was posted on pages of pregnancy centers that did have licensed medical professionals.
The company, without conceding that the language was misleading, changed the notices to state that pregnancy resource centers “do not offer abortions or referrals to abortion providers.” Mr. Paxton said at the time that the new language was accurate.
