§ 98C.006.Injunctive Relief

The injunctive remedy, and for most claimants it is the point of the suit.

A court may issue a temporary restraining order or a temporary or permanent injunction to restrain and prevent the online impersonation of the claimant, on the motion of a claimant depicted in the impersonation.

Three stages of relief — a restraining order at the outset, a temporary injunction during the case, and a permanent injunction at the end. The first matters most, because an impersonation continues to operate every day it exists.

The order runs against the impersonator, not the platform. The construction section forecloses liability for an interactive computer service, so the injunction cannot be directed at the service under this chapter.

In practice a court order establishing that an account is an impersonation is what platforms act on, so the remedy is effective indirectly.

Note what this section lacks. The intimate visual material chapter attaches fixed per-violation damages — $1,000 wilful, $500 otherwise — to breaching its injunction. This section has no equivalent, so violating an order here is enforced through ordinary contempt rather than a statutory sum.

The two-way fee provision partly compensates for that, since a claimant returning to court over a violation recovers fees on prevailing.