Facebook parent company Meta has responded to a coordinated series of lawsuits (list of states and the complaint below) which include one filed in Federal court on behalf of 33 states and state Attorneys General, and 9 other related suits each filed in individual states in state court.

There is a groundswell of GDPR-like privacy legislation being introduced in several states, with laws to protect the privacy of online personal information and data being introduced in Washington, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island and Hawaii.

With today’s Supreme Court decision in the Wayfair v. South Dakota case, the Supremes have cleared the way for states to collect sales tax from Internet-based merchants who do not have a physical presence within the state; however the ruling is quite narrow in its scope and so does not open the floodgates for states to tax anybody and everybody who arguably does business online within a given state. Read on for a plain English explanation of this Internet sales tax decision, as well as a link to the full South Dakota v. Wayfair decision and the dissenting opinions.