Judge Dismisses Md. Digital Ad Tax Challenge
A U.S. district court judge dismissed businesses’ challenge to Maryland’s digital ad tax law Wednesday. U.S. District Court of Maryland Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby granted the state’s motion to dismiss and denied the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s motion for summary…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
judgment on the remaining count in the complaint. In January, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals returned the case to the district court as it disagreed that a decision on the constitutionality of a related pass-through ban was moot (see 2401100060). The Maryland law’s pass-through prohibition “restricts protected speech, to the extent that this statute requires that a covered taxpayer not directly pass on the cost of the tax imposed” by the Digital Advertising Gross Revenues Tax Act, through a separate fee, surcharge or line item, Griggsby wrote. “But Plaintiffs have not met their burden to show that a substantial number of the Pass-Through Prohibition’s applications are unconstitutional, when judged in relation to the statute’s plainly legitimate sweep, to prevail on their First Amendment claim.”