In a series of rushed hearings closed to the public at Apple’s request, a Moscow court on Monday fined the tech giant in three separate cases for violating Russia’s anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda laws.

They’re the first cases brought against the company under the latest iteration of laws meant to erase LGBTQ+ identity, which President Vladimir Putin has called evidence of moral decay in the West.

Apple was found guilty of three administrative offenses related to “LGBT propaganda” and fined 7.5 million rubles, or about $93,500. A fourth case alleging Apple failed to take down unspecified non-LGBTQ+ online content that Moscow deems illegal earned a fourth fine for the company.

At the start of the first hearing, Apple’s representative, Elena Chetverikova, requested the proceedings be closed to the press and public because proprietary information about the company would be disclosed. It remains unclear precisely what Apple’s violation of laws related to “LGBTQ+ propaganda” was.

Adding to the confusion, the judge in the case, Alexandra Anokhina, rushed through her summary after the public was invited back into court following the first hearing.

Independent Russian news outlet Mediazona elaborated: “Our reporter notes that the judge read the decision at such a rapid pace it was virtually impossible to grasp the precise details of the claims. We then approached the court’s press secretary to request that a summary of the official court record be released for clarity. The response was terse: ‘The hearing is closed.’”

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Apple has often yielded to Roskomnadzor, the country’s censorship agency, enabling the company to largely maintain its operations in Russia.

Based on research from digital rights group GreatFire and Apple’s own transparency report, the tech giant removed twelve applications at Russia’s behest in 2023. The apps allegedly violated laws enacted to silence dissent and counter “fake news” about the military, contrary to the state’s narrative about the war.

Amid a resurgent crackdown on dissent in 2024, Apple removed nearly sixty applications at Roskomnadzor’s request from the Russian App Store between July and mid-September, many without any public notification. Among them were several major VPN services, which enable secure, encrypted connections between servers and users.

In the aftermath, Amnezia VPN’s developers described Apple as “the largest provider of censorship in the world.” 

Apple went on to restrict access to podcasts from BBC Russian, investigative news site The Insider, and Ekho Moskvy, a liberal radio station. In November, another fine was levied against the company for failing to delete unspecified “prohibited information.”

Apple was subject to Moscow’s first major punitive action around “LGBTQ+ propaganda” in August 2023, when a Moscow court fined the company for failing to remove “inaccurate” content concerning the war in Ukraine and accused it of targeting minors with LGBTQ+ content in a “destabilization” effort directed at the government.

That hearing was also held behind closed doors at Apple’s request, with company representatives citing “commercial confidentiality.”

Apps depicting same-sex couples were reportedly among the content in violation of “LGBTQ+ propaganda laws.”