The Department of Justice asked the court on July 29 to reconsider a ruling that would allow Apple to obtain records from 14 federal agencies as part of discovery in the government’s 2024 antitrust lawsuit. The request comes after retired federal judge Jose Linares, serving as a special discovery master in the case, rejected the government’s effort to block Apple from seeking those documents earlier this month, a ruling the DOJ now wants reversed before any appeal deadline kicks in.
Apple made the underlying document request last May, asking the court to compel 14 federal agencies to hand over records related to how they evaluate, purchase, and use smartphones and wearables. If the agencies’ internal documents show they chose Apple products because of their privacy, security, or other features, that evidence could help undermine the DOJ’s claim that Apple illegally maintains a monopoly in the smartphone market.
Why the DOJ is pushing back
The government’s objections cover several grounds: it argues the agencies are not parties to the case, that Apple’s document requests are irrelevant and overly broad, and that compliance could risk disclosing privileged, classified, or national-security-sensitive information. The DOJ’s core procedural complaint about Linares’s ruling is that he did not conduct an agency-by-agency assessment before concluding that all 14 agencies were subject to discovery obligations, applying the same standard across the board rather than evaluating each agency’s situation individually.
The DOJ and the agencies have also asked the court to confirm that their deadline to appeal Linares’s ruling will stay paused while he decides whether to reverse it. If he stands by his original decision, the appeal period would begin, allowing the government to challenge the ruling before the district judge overseeing the case. That structure means this particular dispute could run through at least one more round before it’s resolved.
The settlement talks running in parallel
All of this is happening while Apple and the DOJ are reportedly in active discussions about a potential settlement that could bring the broader antitrust case to a close. Apple has made several concrete changes over the past year that address some of the DOJ’s stated concerns, including changes that touch on features central to iOS 27:
- RCS support added to the Messages app
- Mini Apps Partner Program launched in the App Store
- NFC chip access broadened for third-party developers
The original DOJ lawsuit focused on five areas of the iPhone experience: super apps, cloud streaming games, third-party messaging apps, third-party smartwatches, and third-party digital wallets. Apple has also separately requested internal documents from Samsung in South Korea, indicating the discovery phase is being contested on multiple fronts at once.
The federal agency document fight is one corner of a case that looks increasingly likely to settle before it reaches a verdict, but Apple’s aggressive approach in discovery suggests it isn’t negotiating from weakness.
