US District Judge Amit Mehta has dismissed the antitrust lawsuits Chegg and Penske Media Corp. filed against Google over AI Overviews, ruling in a 41-page opinion dated Wednesday, Sept. 30, that the publishers failed to state a viable claim from the outset.

Reuters first reported the dismissals. The companies had argued that Google's AI-generated search summaries repurpose their content and siphon readers away from their websites. Mehta granted Google's motions to dismiss both cases.

What the publishers claimed

Chegg filed its suit earlier in 2025. Penske followed in September 2025. Both argued Google broke antitrust law by forcing publishers to accept AI Overviews of their material as the price of remaining in Google's search results. The practice, they said, cut their traffic and revenue.

The alleged losses are concrete. Press Gazette reported that Penske — whose properties include Variety, Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline — said its organic affiliate revenue fell by more than a third from its peak to the end of 2024. Chegg has been vocal for months about AI summaries eroding its homework-help traffic.

The plaintiffs also argued that in a competitive market, Google would pay them for republishing their work or using it to train AI systems.

Why the claims failed

Mehta's reasoning turned on one point: there was no deal. Press Gazette reported that the judge found no formal bargain between the publishers and Google. Google never promised traffic in exchange for content, and nothing in the record showed the two sides communicating in a way that suggested mutual consent.

Mehta wrote that the plaintiffs had pleaded only an expectation of search traffic — and an expectation is not an agreement. That, he said, is simply how a general search engine works.

Penske pushed the theory that the court could find an implied agreement. Mehta rejected that reading, warning it would mean Google has contracts with every site it indexes — billions of publishers. He also wrote it was more plausible that the publishers had voluntarily accepted free crawling.

The judge separately dismissed Penske's claim that Google unlawfully tied AI Overviews to search. He concluded neither company pleaded enough facts to establish the specific Sherman Act violations they alleged.

A judge sympathetic to publishers, but pointed at Congress

Mehta did not frame the ruling as a judgment that publishers are unharmed. He wrote that he does not take the alleged harms lightly and said he is not unsympathetic to publishers — or to the journalists, educators and other creators whose content Google takes and repurposes without paying for it.

But antitrust law, he said, cannot substitute for the power of legislators to address the economic harm that innovation may cause, according to Reuters. In effect: if AI Overviews are starving content producers, that is a question for lawmakers, not the Sherman Act.

Google denied wrongdoing throughout the litigation. It argued it has no obligation to index publishers' content on the publishers' preferred terms. Reuters said Chegg, Penske and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the dismissals.

Second time this year Mehta rejects an AI Overviews suit

The ruling is not an isolated one. Mehta rejected comparable claims earlier this year from local news publishers Helena World Chronicle LLC of Arkansas and Mississippi-based Emmerich Newspapers. Press Gazette reported that in that case, too, he found no written or oral agreement to supply news content in exchange for search traffic.

The dismissed cases are Chegg Inc v. Google LLC, No. 25-cv-543, and Penske Media Corp v. Google, No. 25-cv-3192, both in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

What it means for publishers

For site owners watching referral traffic decline as AI Overviews expand, the rulings close off one legal theory: conditioning search inclusion on accepting AI summaries does not, by itself, create an antitrust injury courts will hear. The economics may still hurt — Penske's revenue figure makes that plain — but Mehta's opinions point publishers toward licensing negotiations, legislative remedies, or amended pleadings rather than the courtroom.

Watch next for whether Chegg and Penske appeal, refile with new facts, or join the growing push for compensation frameworks outside antitrust law.