Florida and three other states sued TP-Link yesterday, accusing the router maker of lying to customers about its ties to China.
The lawsuits claim TP-Link downplayed both its Chinese connections and the risk that Chinese state hackers could exploit its routers. The timing is no accident: the filings land about six months after the FCC announced a ban on consumer routers made wholly or partly outside the US. Since then, Netgear, Asus, Adtran, Amazon and its Eero unit, Calix, Nokia, and SpaceX's Starlink division have all secured exemptions. TP-Link has not, which means its new Wi-Fi 8 routers currently cannot be sold in the US, though older, already-approved models are still on shelves.
This is a one-two punch, not a coincidence. A federal ban handles the supply chain going forward, while state lawsuits go after what TP-Link allegedly told consumers in the past, which is a different legal target with different remedies, like fines and disclosure requirements. It also echoes the Huawei and ZTE playbook from a few years back, where national-security suspicion of Chinese hardware eventually hardened into formal exclusion.
Worth noting: the exemption list isn't a simple no-China-made-parts test. Starlink and Nokia both rely on global manufacturing too. That suggests the real filter is less about where components are made and more about who the FCC and state attorneys general trust not to answer to Beijing, which is a much fuzzier standard than the ban's own language implies.