Mayday Health v. Jackley
Issue
Whether the South Dakota Attorney General's threatened enforcement of the state Deceptive Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Act (SDCL § 37-24) against a nonprofit that publishes truthful, noncommercial reproductive health information and hyperlinks to third-party websites constitutes unconstitutional viewpoint-based retaliation and prior restraint in violation of the First Amendment.
What Happened
Mayday Health, a New York-based nonprofit that operates a reproductive health information website and placed gas station placards in South Dakota directing viewers to that site, filed a complaint in the S.D.N.Y. on January 6, 2026, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The South Dakota Attorney General, at the Governor's direction, sent Mayday a cease-and-desist letter threatening felony criminal consequences or civil penalties up to $5,000 per violation under SDCL § 37-24-6, and subsequently filed an unserved injunction motion in South Dakota state court targeting both Mayday's website content and its physical signs. Mayday alleges that the investigation was a pretextual "sham," that the Attorney General's claims are objectively frivolous because the targeted statements are literally true, that Mayday's publications are noncommercial speech outside the statute's scope, and that any liability premised on linked third-party content would additionally be barred by § 230(c)(1); Mayday further alleges it has already self-censored by halting additional signage and withholding social media content, satisfying the chilling-effect injury requirement. No court has yet ruled on the merits.
Why It Matters
The case tests whether a state attorney general may use a consumer-protection enforcement threat as a mechanism to suppress a noncommercial publisher's truthful speech about out-of-state legal services — squarely implicating *Bigelow v. Virginia*'s protection for cross-border reproductive-health information — while also presenting a notable pleading-stage invocation of § 230(c)(1) as a shield against liability predicated on a website's hyperlinks to third-party content, potentially advancing the question of how § 230 interacts with state regulatory (rather than private civil) actions targeting a platform's linking choices.
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Other proceedings in the same litigation tracked by this monitor.
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