Florida’s lawsuit against ChatGPT parent company OpenAI is no longer a federal case.
A federal judge remanded the case back to the Florida 10th Judicial Circuit in Highlands County on Tuesday.
That’s where Attorney General James Uthmeier originally filed the lawsuit back in June. Uthmeier alleges that OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, released and aggressively marketed ChatGPT to the public while disregarding repeated warnings about user safety from inside and outside the company, and claiming the product was safe.
The allegations run afoul of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. Examples listed in the suit include the 2025 FSU mass shooting, as well as instances where ChatGPT presumably gave potentially dangerous information.
[RELATED: FSU shooting suspect used ChatGPT to help plan fatal attack, court records show]
However, attorneys for Altman and OpenAI say the fact that the law relies on standards from the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act meant the case should actually be tried in federal court, because the case could have national implications.
Federal Judge Aileen Cannon said attorneys did not prove the case needed to be in her court, however.
“There is little in the pleading or in the parties’ submissions to support the notion that the federal government has a “strong interest in having cases like this litigated and adjudicated in a federal forum,” Cannon wrote. “Indeed, the two paradigmatic “substantial” federal questions—(1) the federal Government’s “direct interest in the availability of a federal forum to vindicate its own administrative action” and (2) the “constitutional validity of an act of Congress which is directly drawn in question,” are not present at all; the federal government has no discernable role in this action, and COPPA’s constitutionality is not in question.”
This means the case is going back to the Florida 10th Judicial Circuit to be tried.
The suit alleges that ChatGPT makes little effort to provide safeguards for minors, noting that the free version of the program has “no gatekeeping or age verification mechanism whatsoever” and no ability to inform parents about what conversations minors are having with the program.
You can read the order below.