Section 230, student debt, Elizabeth Holmes appeal: The top business law stories for 2023

Yahoo Finance's Alexis Keenan details the top legal stories that will likely make headlines in 2023.

Video Transcript

- Something old and something new-- the financial world might be shuffling back to work to start off the new year, but what about all the courtroom dramas? What about the law? They're also seeing some familiar names and, of course, some brand-new challenges. Let's take a look at some of the biggest legal issues cases and trials that we're watching in 2023 with Yahoo Finance's Alexis Keenan.

ALEXIS KEENAN: Well, businesses might still be getting back to work in this new year, but courts are back in session. These are the big stories in business law to watch in 2023.

A 24-year-old law that keeps everything from YouTube to shoe shops from getting sued over what their users post on their online platforms is headed to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the EU will start enforcing new laws that open the door to liability for user-generated content. The new laws, the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, also say big tech companies must not favor their own products and services over third parties.

Student debt in focus as well. In two cases coming up this year, the Supreme Court will consider whether President Biden has the power to cancel student loan debt for certain American taxpayers. In 2022, the president issued an executive order to forgive up to $20,000 in educational debt for some taxpayers in certain adjusted income brackets.

And the Theranos saga continues. Fallen Silicon Valley entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes says she's appealing her criminal fraud convictions that were reached by a federal jury. Holmes, who founded the blood testing startup Theranos, was sentenced for lying to investors who backed her company, defrauding them of hundreds of millions of dollars. At its peak, Theranos was valued at $9 billion and had made Holmes the world's wealthiest self-made woman.

And Elon Musk, meanwhile, under a microscope over his take private acquisition of Twitter in October. The issue at stake, whether Twitter, with its dramatically reduced staff, can still comply with a longstanding agreement with the FTC. That's to protect private user data. The serial CEO, of course, still running Tesla, SpaceX, and Neuralink, all of which are also drawing scrutiny from market watchers.

And staying with tech, an appeals court set this year to decide if Apple violated antitrust laws when it blocked video game developer Epic Games from its App Store. In September, following a federal trial in California, a district court judge issued an injunction to stop Apple from blocking direct in-app purchases and from blocking developers from communicating directly with their customers.

And finally, the FTX fallout-- the $32 billion implosion that sent the second largest crypto empire, FTX, into bankruptcy is now also a criminal matter after the US Justice Department filed fraud charges against the company's founder and CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried. Fried is also facing civil actions from the SEC and CFTC. The former crypto chief was arrested in the Bahamas last month. The bankruptcy, along with the charges brought by US authorities, promised to be among the most closely watched business law stories of 2023.