NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled that a state telecom engineer certifying an iPhone company was entitled to the same rights as a lawyer in a lawsuit filed by Apple.
The court also upheld a New York state law that requires telecom engineers to undergo an ethics course before they can sign up for an iPhone contract.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the state law did not violate the First Amendment right to freedom of speech because it only required applicants for a contract to complete a questionnaire that would inform the phone’s technical standards.
The ruling is significant because Apple’s iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are the latest phones to have security vulnerabilities.
A federal jury in March awarded Apple $1.6 billion for those issues.
The company is appealing the verdict.
The appeals court’s ruling came on the heels of a separate lawsuit by the state of New York against the U.N. agency that oversees phone security, saying the law violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
