Why is the Trump administration really appealing its Meta loss?

After a federal judge ruled that Meta was not an illegal monopolist in a blow against the Federal Trade Commission, the agency issued what was in part a typical statement of disappointment. Another part of the statement was anything but: a political attack on the judge himself.

“The deck was always stacked against us with Judge [James] Boasberg, who is currently facing articles of impeachment,” FTC spokesperson Joe Simonson said in a statement after Boasberg released his decision in November. Simonson appeared to reference articles filed by a Republican lawmaker after Boasberg issued rulings that were unfavorable to GOP lawmakers and the Trump administration over a 2020 election probe and immigration policies.

In late January, the FTC announced it would appeal the Meta ruling. Legal experts tell The Verge its decision isn’t surprising or unreasonable. But the attack on Boasberg, they say, casts a shadow over the decision — making the motives for what might typically be a routine move less clear.

“You wonder how much there’s an element of irritation or annoyance just at Judge Boasberg himself here, and how much of it is an institutional decision that, ‘we’re going to show you,’” says Bill Kovacic, a former FTC chair and current George Washington University law professor. “This is a judge who the White House has criticized severely. Is there some element here of personal animus focused on this judge?”

Kovacic and others say there’s a sensible legal argument against the way Boasberg reviewed FTC v. Meta, though the agency hasn’t yet detailed its appeal strategy. The lawsuit, filed in 2020, argues Meta crushed competition by acquiring nascent rivals Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014 respectively. Early on, however, Boasberg said the FTC needed to prove that Meta maintained or threatened to maintain an unlawful social networking monopoly as of the 2025 trial date. By that measure, he determined, the FTC’s case failed — largely because of TikTok.

TikTok exploded in popularity throughout the pandemic, and both Meta and YouTube invested heavily in short-form video to compete. Its popularity — which, according to internal documents, deeply concerned Meta — convinced Boasberg that the FTC had overstated Meta’s dominance in the current day. Boasberg admitted in his ruling that in response to earlier attempts by Meta to get him to dismiss the case, his orders “did not even mention the word ‘TikTok.’” But at the time of his 2025 ruling, “that app holds center stage as Meta’s fiercest rival.”

Now, Boasberg’s decision to judge Meta’s monopoly by 2025 standards may become the FTC’s strongest basis to appeal its loss. Boasberg’s interpretation of the relevant timeframe arguably creates a “moving target,” says Vanderbilt law professor Rebecca Haw Allensworth. That could discourage the agency from bringing future enforcement actions if the market could shift while litigating the case. And the appeals court could — though it’s far from certain — determine it doesn’t make sense. “It just creates an additional risk of losing a trial if facts change on the ground underneath you,” she says.

The court of appeals judges won’t have to defer to Boasberg’s decision on how to interpret the law, as they would for his findings of fact. They could determine that Boasberg should have considered the relevant timeframe to be earlier, like the time at which the lawsuit was filed, when TikTok was growing rapidly but was far smaller. Viewed through that lens, the court might determine that Meta was a monopolist at the relevant time period — though again, it’s far from certain.

During the Biden administration, the FTC chose not to appeal a different loss to Meta, when it tried to challenge its proposed acquisition of VR startup Within. But the text of the ruling included a helpful legal interpretation for challenging future cases. Overall, the FTC has invested far more time and resources already into the social media monopolization case, which has spanned five years, two Trump administrations and the Biden administration, so it’s not entirely surprising that it wouldn’t give up now.

But like other actions during the second Trump administration, where formerly independent agencies like the FTC have explicitly aligned themselves with the White House, the attack on Boasberg’s record has created a cloud of suspicion.

Boasberg became a target of Trump soon after the president’s second term began in 2025. After Boasberg blocked the administration’s deportation orders last year, Trump posted on Truth Social that he was a “Radical Left Lunatic” and “a troublemaker and agitator.” Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) introduced articles of impeachment against Boasberg last year over his decisions temporarily blocking the Trump administration from moving forward with its planned mass deportation of Venezuelan migrants and for what Gill says was his role in authorizing “frivolous nondisclosure orders” so that special counsel Jack Smith could access Republican lawmakers’ phone records without their knowledge in his investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

Kovacic says the appeals court is unlikely to find personal attacks on Boasberg compelling, but adds that it likely wasn’t the intended recipient of the PR statement. “My sense is the audience for that comment was the White House,” he says. The FTC and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Meta spokesperson Chris Sgro said in a statement after the FTC announced its appeal that Boasberg’s decision was “correct, and recognizes the fierce competition we face.”

There’s also the fact that continuing with an appeal may maintain a point of leverage by the administration over Meta. “One thing that we know for sure about Trump is that he likes to have leverage over powerful companies, especially media companies, that can influence public opinion, and that can be politically valuable to Trump,” says Allensworth. “So he might as well keep the case going as a source of leverage.” (Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has visited Trump multiple times, and Meta agreed to pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit brought by him.) Though the FTC was created as an agency independent from the executive branch, the current chair has aligned himself with the White House, calling it the Trump-Vance FTC.

Given the real, if not surefire, arguments in the FTC’s favor, Kovacic says he assumes the decision to appeal “is mainly about the merits.” But, he asks of the FTC’s comments on Boasberg, “why are you talking about the other stuff?”