Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California attends a panel discussion at the American Bar Association (ABA) Antitrust Spring Meeting on April 2, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Drew Angerer | AFP | Getty Images
It’s been a crazy four months for Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.
The Northern District of California judge spent late April and much of May in a downtown Oakland courtroom overseeing the high-profile battle between Elon Musk and Sam Altman.
Now, Gonzalez-Rogers, 61, is preparing for the second week of his trial. meta As California Attorney General Rob Bonta leads a coalition of state legislatures in a lawsuit being hailed as social media’s “Big Tobacco Moment,” so too is the advertising business.
Between the two trials, Gonzalez-Rogers was appointed as the court’s presiding judge 15 years after he was appointed by then-President Barack Obama. She replaces Judge Richard Seeborg, who held the position for five years, and comes to office at a time when technology companies are bigger and more powerful than ever and artificial intelligence is making the courts more high-stakes.
This district includes San Francisco. OpenAI is home to Meta and most of its technology companies, as well as Silicon Valley as a whole. For Gonzalez-Rogers, this job is the culmination of a 35-year legal career in California, which began in private practice before being appointed to the Alameda County Superior Court in 2008 by then-Governor Gonzalez-Rogers. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Gonzalez Rogers, known to many as YGR, has developed a reputation for his no-nonsense demeanor.
“I would describe her as a pistol,” said Steve Berman, a managing partner at Hagens Berman who served as Big Tobacco’s co-lead counsel and litigator in the 1990s. apple Before Gonzalez Rogers in some cases. “If the lawyers give her a bull, she just goes after them.”
A native of Houston, Gonzalez-Rogers completed his undergraduate studies at Princeton University and received his law degree from the University of Texas. He then joined the law firm Cooley in 1991, becoming the firm’s first Latinx associate.
While a state judge, she caught the attention of then-Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat. Feinstein, who died in 2023, later recommended Gonzalez-Rogers’ nomination to Congress to President Obama.
History with Apple
Before the recent incident involving Mehta and Musk, Gonzalez-Rogers was well-known among Apple supporters.
In 2012, she inherited Pepper v. Apple, an early antitrust case against the App Store. iPhone owners claimed that Apple forced them to buy apps only through its own store, allowing the company to charge a 30% fee and drive up prices. Gonzalez-Rogers initially dismissed the case, but the Supreme Court later took up the matter and ruled that consumers could sue the company.
Around the same time, Gonzalez-Rogers oversaw an antitrust case involving claims that Apple unfairly blocked users from playing music from sources other than iTunes, locking out competitors. Apple won.
But her most notable Apple case came five years ago and was against Epic Games.
In 2020, Epic enabled its own payment options within Fortnite, bypassing Apple’s payment system and its 30% fee. After the iPhone maker removed Fortnite from the App Store, Epic sued Apple, accusing it of illegally controlling how the app is distributed and how payments are processed on the iPhone.
After a three-week jury trial in 2021, Gonzalez-Rogers largely sided with Apple, finding that Epic had failed to prove that Apple was an illegal monopolist. He also ruled that Apple’s “anti-steering” rules violate California competition law and ordered the company to allow developers to steer users to external payment options.
But that wasn’t the end.
Gonzalez-Rogers said last year that Apple intentionally violated the injunction, writing in a court filing that the company’s vice president of finance “blatantly lied” in court about when the company decided to impose a 27% fee on some App Store-related purchases.
“Neither Apple nor its attorneys have corrected the now obvious lies,” Rogers wrote, adding that he believes Apple “employed lies and false statements in this court.”
Mr. Rogers referred the matter to the U.S. attorney to investigate whether to pursue criminal contempt proceedings, but no charges were filed.
Musk vs. Altman
Earlier this year, Gonzalez-Rogers was thrust back into the spotlight as Musk and Altman took their long-running feud to court.
In 2024, Musk sued Altman, OpenAI, and fellow co-founder Greg Brockman, accusing them of “stealing charity.” After a three-week trial, an advisory jury ruled that Musk, who helped found OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015, did not file the lawsuit in time, and the case ended without resolving his claims.
Musk called the verdict a “technical issue” and vowed to appeal, while Gonzalez-Rogers said at the end of the trial that there was “substantial evidence to support the jury’s findings.”
A spokesperson for Gonzalez-Rogers told CNBC that the judge handed the jurors a pocket constitution from the Supreme Court’s bookstore, along with a signed letter of appreciation for their service.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appears in court at the Ronald V. Delmes Federal Building on May 12, 2026 in Oakland, California.
Benjamin Fanjoy | Getty Images
Similar to Musk v. Altman, Gonzalez-Rogers is presiding over the jury trial in which the state legislature takes on meth. An advisory jury will hear the evidence and render a verdict, but the decision is not legally binding and Gonzalez-Rogers retains the final say.
Stephen Byker McKee, a Duquesne University law professor and civil litigation expert, told CNBC that advisory juries represent an addition to a courtroom trial.
“An advisory jury is established only when a party does not have a right to a jury, and the judge can decide the matter independently,” Byker-Mackie said. “An advisory jury allows a judge to determine how the community feels about a particular event or a particular act.”
Gonzalez-Rogers explains in a court filing:
“The issues occurring in this issue impact the daily lives of citizens across the states involved,” she wrote. “Accordingly, the court finds it prudent to convene an advisory jury to seek ‘community standards.'”
When it comes to the potential impact of Gonzalez-Rogers’ final decision, this could be her most important case yet.
Meta estimates that potential fines from states’ lawsuits could reach $1.4 trillion, but Bonta says states are not asking for that much.
Money isn’t Meta’s biggest concern.
The states allege that despite being aware of the vulnerabilities, Meta knowingly used features such as infinite scrolling, autoplay, likes, push notifications, and disappearing content to attract younger users to the app. They also accuse Meta of collecting information from children without parental consent and misleading the public about the risks of its platform. Mr. Mehta denied the allegations.
Bonta and the AGs of Colorado, New Jersey and Kentucky are co-leading the trial, representing a bipartisan group of 29 AGs seeking algorithmic changes that could force Meta to change how Facebook and Instagram design and operate features for younger users. Meta relies on its algorithms for targeted advertising, which accounts for 98% of its revenue and is a key source of growth as the company invests heavily in AI.
Opening arguments began Tuesday, and Bonta reminded reporters after the first day that the trial was about “civil penalties, restitution, and distortion,” and not primarily about money.
Gonzalez-Rogers’ court case is expected to last six to seven weeks. This is central to the larger judicial mission.
Gonzalez Rogers is a member of Meta, TikTok, snap and YouTube over allegations of harm to children and teens.
“She’s very smart, so I think she’ll be able to pull off some difficult cases,” Berman said. “I don’t always agree with her on the cases I didn’t win. But I know she’s smart.”
—CNBC’s Jonathan Vanian, Lora Kolodny and Kif Leswing contributed to this report.
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