Vercel escapes contempt rap after admitting it botched FBI warrant response

legal

Files sought by feds were sitting in a deletion queue, not gone for good

Vercel will escape civil penalties over a contempt of court case brought by the US government, but has admitted wrongdoing and overhauled its data retention practices.

The cloud hosting provider failed to comply in a timely manner with a federal search warrant issued in August 2025 at the FBI's request, sought in connection with an unidentified individual's Vercel account, which was deleted before the company acted on the warrant.

At the heart of the legal issue was that the user's account was placed into Vercel's deletion queue.

Deletion queues let data-heavy organizations erase requested information - user accounts and all associated data - thoroughly and without disrupting the live database. 

Vercel believed the data had already been deleted, however, it was still sitting in a deletion queue, and so the company only handed over part of what the FBI was looking for, falling short of full compliance with the warrant. 

On February 2, Vercel's reps attended a hearing to decide whether it would be held in civil contempt as a result of its non-compliance. Magistrate Judge Carson found the US government had established a prima facie case for civil contempt, referring it to a district judge for further consideration.

Three days later, Vercel handed over all the "files it previously believed it did not possess and previously could not locate", according to a Justice Department announcement.

Vercel's civil contempt case will not go any further after it agreed to a stipulated dismissal, a legal mechanism under which the parties agree to end a case permanently. However, the dismissal came with requirements for Vercel, including an admission of wrongdoing.

Vercel admitted its legal process response tools were inadequate in two areas: the Trust and Safety team was unable to locate, preserve, or produce "certain content," and it was also unable to do the same with respect to content held in a deletion queue.

Officials said Vercel has since updated its legal processes to allow it to comply more quickly with future warrants of a similar nature, and it covered the government's legal fees.

"When a federal court issues a search warrant, it is not a suggestion, but a mandatory directive, essential to the pursuit of justice, that a recipient company must comply with," said A. Tysen Duva, assistant attorney general at the Justice Department's Criminal Division. 

"The Criminal Division pursues technology companies who fail to uphold their lawfully mandated obligations. We are pleased Vercel has belatedly complied and accepted responsibility for the unnecessary costs incurred by the government in this matter." ®