Appellate

  • August 21, 2025

    Challenge To Fed. Layoffs A 'Fishing Expedition,' 9th Circ. Told

    A federal government attorney told a Ninth Circuit panel Thursday that a group of unions, nonprofits and cities challenging President Donald Trump's massive layoffs of federal workers have no right to communications and documents showing what went into the layoff decisions, saying it's a "fishing expedition in search of a viable legal theory."

  • August 21, 2025

    Ga. Panel Backs Obstruction Charge Over ID Refusal

    The Georgia Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld a felony and three misdemeanor counts of obstruction of a law enforcement officer for the passenger of a car who refused to produce her driver's license during a traffic stop, despite possessing a valid license.

  • August 21, 2025

    Family Urges 5th Circ. To Hold Penske Liable For Fatal Crash

    The family of a man killed in a 2018 collision has told the Fifth Circuit that freight broker Penske cannot claim ignorance to escape liability for negligently hiring the unsafe motor carrier and driver who caused the Texas accident.

  • August 21, 2025

    Appeals Court Says Dallas Must Release Discrimination Records

    A Texas appeals court ruled Thursday that the city of Dallas has to turn over records on a federal housing discrimination investigation to The Dallas Morning News, saying the information was not exempt from public disclosure.

  • August 21, 2025

    Amazon Must Yield To DOL Expense Subpoena, 9th Circ. Says

    Amazon has to comply with the U.S. Department of Labor's demands for data on travel reimbursements paid to supervisors sent to New York to dissuade warehouse workers from unionizing, a Ninth Circuit panel said on Thursday, concluding the information is germane to an agency probe of potential reporting violations.  

  • August 21, 2025

    6th Circ. Reinstates Fired USPS Worker's Medical Leave Suit

    The Sixth Circuit on Thursday told a lower court to reassess a fired USPS employee's medical leave suit alleging the agency illegally faulted him for sickle cell anemia-related absences, saying the trial judge erred by using a doctor's estimate to cap his time off.

  • August 21, 2025

    Consumer Advocates Blast FERC Inaction On Power Auction

    Consumer advocates and municipal utilities have told the D.C. Circuit that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission can't use a Third Circuit ruling to claim it is powerless to prevent the rerunning of a flawed electricity capacity auction that overcharged consumers by $183 million.

  • August 21, 2025

    DC Circ. Lets Trump's NCUA Board Purge Stand Amid Appeal

    A D.C. Circuit panel said Thursday that the Trump administration can continue blocking two ousted National Credit Union Administration leaders from returning to the agency's board while it appeals a lower-court ruling reinstating them.

  • August 21, 2025

    Property Owners Say SF Vacancy Tax Violates Rights

    A San Francisco levy on vacant residential units is not a tax, but a penalty, and violates property owners' constitutional rights to keep their private property from being taken for public use without just compensation, the owners told a California appellate court.

  • August 21, 2025

    Texas High Court Restores 35-Year Sentence In Pit Bull Attack

    The highest criminal appeals court in Texas has put back in place a sentence for a man convicted after his pit bulls attacked a 10-year-old boy, following an intermediary appeals court's reversal of his conviction based on its reading of Texas criminal law.

  • August 21, 2025

    UC Grant Cuts Over DEI Likely Stifle Speech, 9th Circ. Says

    The Ninth Circuit on Thursday refused to pause a preliminary injunction requiring three federal agencies to reinstate research grants terminated following two of President Donald Trump's executive orders seeking to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion, saying the terminations likely aimed to suppress speech favorable of DEI and environmental justice.

  • August 21, 2025

    9th Circ. Rejects Rehearing On Alaskan Willow Oil Project

    A Ninth Circuit panel won't undo its ruling to uphold the federal government's decision to only move forward with alternative versions of the ConocoPhillips Willow project that strayed from its original plans and that Alaskan Native and environmental advocacy groups say will result in full development of the Arctic oil reservoir.

  • August 21, 2025

    Trump Urges DC Circ. Not To Review Its Foreign Aid Decision

    The Trump administration is urging the D.C. Circuit to leave its panel's split decision that nonprofits can't force the government to release foreign aid in place, arguing that full en banc review is unnecessary and that private enforcement of the Impoundment Control Act would run afoul of the law.

  • August 21, 2025

    Texas AG Can't Question NGO Over Alleged Border Crossing Aid

    A Texas appellate court shot down the state attorney general's request to take a presuit deposition from an aid organization that allegedly helped unauthorized immigrants cross the southern border, saying in a Thursday split decision the attorney general failed to show adequate evidence.

  • August 21, 2025

    Dolby Says It Has Right To Know Who's Behind PTAB Petition

    Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp. wants the full Federal Circuit to rethink a panel's dismissal of its challenge to Patent Trial and Appeal Board proceedings that it prevailed on, saying it was being denied the right to know who exactly was behind a petition seeking to invalidate its patent.

  • August 21, 2025

    Workers Snag Deal In $500M Twitter Severance Suit

    Social media platform X has agreed to settle a suit accusing it of owing workers $500 million in severance after Elon Musk took the reins of the company while it was still named Twitter, the two workers suing and the entity told the Ninth Circuit.

  • August 21, 2025

    Receiver In Nate Paul Dispute Not Entitled To $2.8M In Fees

    A state appeals court said Thursday that a receiver in a dispute involving companies owned by real estate investor Nate Paul can't recover $2.8 million in fees because the sum the fees stem from never came into his possession.

  • August 21, 2025

    9th Circ. Lets DHS End More Temporary Protections, For Now

    A Ninth Circuit panel put on hold for now a district court ruling postponing the Trump administration's bid to end temporary protected status for 60,000 people from Nicaragua, Honduras and Nepal, but denied the government's bid to halt the lower court proceedings.

  • August 21, 2025

    High Court Allows Trump Admin To Cancel $783M In NIH Grants

    The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Trump administration to resume the mass termination of scientific grants, overturning rulings by lower courts that had kept the funds flowing to universities and other recipients. 

  • August 21, 2025

    Houston Urges Texas Justices To Reject Pappas Contract Row

    A lower appellate court got it right when it ruled that the city of Houston was shielded from a lawsuit over an airport concessions contract under the state's government code, the city told the Texas Supreme Court.

  • August 21, 2025

    Minor Leaguers Ask Justices To Kill MLB Antitrust Exemption

    Former players accusing Major League Baseball and its teams of colluding to pay minor leaguers "poverty level" wages are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case and overturn baseball's century-old exemption from antitrust law.

  • August 21, 2025

    Texas High Court Takes Down Hurdle On Campaign Prosecutions

    The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has ruled that prosecutors do not need referrals from the Texas Ethics Commission to bring campaign misconduct charges, reversing its own recent decision that had thrown out a grand jury indictment against a former judicial candidate.

  • August 21, 2025

    Fed. Circ. Leaves Lost Profits Award Alone In Tennis IP Case

    The Federal Circuit on Thursday refused to award a tennis technology company more than the $119,000 in lost profit damages it already won in a case involving a vanishing defendant and the operator of the U.S. Open, but it found a lower court was wrong not to award post-judgment interest.

  • August 21, 2025

    EPA Denies 'Sitting On Its Hands' On Pesticide Ban Request

    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday asked the Ninth Circuit to reject green groups' effort to force it to respond to their petition to ban organophosphate pesticides, saying it "has not unreasonably delayed action."

  • August 21, 2025

    NY Court Says Passenger Can't Challenge Gun Evidence

    A man charged with criminal weapons possession and other crimes after police pulled over the car in which he was riding had no reasonable expectation of privacy as a passenger, a New York appeals court has found, reversing a trial court's decision to suppress evidence of a gun.

Expert Analysis

  • How Latest High Court Rulings Refine Employment Law

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    The 2024-2025 U.S. Supreme Court term did not radically rewrite employment law, but sharpened focus on textual fidelity, procedural rigor and the boundaries of statutory relief, say attorneys at Krevolin & Horst.

  • Calif. Air Waivers Fight Fuels Automakers', States' Uncertainty

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    The unprecedented attempt by Congress and the Trump administration to kill the Clean Air Act waivers supporting California's vehicle emissions standards will eventually end up in the U.S. Supreme Court — but meanwhile, vehicle manufacturers, and states following California's standards, are left in limbo, says John Watson at Spencer Fane.

  • Diversity, Equity, Indictment? Contractor Risks After Kousisis

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    The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Kousisis v. U.S. decision, holding that economic loss is not required to sustain wire fraud charges related to fraudulent inducement, may extend criminal liability to government contractors that make false diversity, equity and inclusion certifications, say attorneys at Moore & Van Allen.

  • Series

    Law School's Missed Lessons: Navigating Client Trauma

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    Law schools don't train students to handle repeated exposure to clients' traumatic experiences, but for litigators practicing in areas like civil rights and personal injury, success depends on the ability to view cases clinically and to recognize when you may need to seek help, says Katie Bennett at Robins Kaplan.

  • 9th Circ. Customs Ruling A Limited Win For FCA Plaintiffs

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    While the decision last month in Island Industries v. Sigma may be welcome news for False Claims Act relators, under binding precedent courts within the Ninth Circuit still do not have jurisdiction to adjudicate customs-based FCA claims pursued by the government, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.

  • Opinion

    4 Former Justices Would Likely Frown On Litigation Funding

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    As courts increasingly confront cases involving hidden litigation finance contracts, the jurisprudence of four former U.S. Supreme Court justices establishes a constitutional framework that risks erosion by undisclosed financial interests, says Roland Eisenhuth at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association.

  • Quantifying Trading-Based Damages Using Price Impact

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    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission will likely increasingly rely on price impact analyses to demonstrate pecuniary harm from trading-related misconduct, meaning measuring price impact will be helpful in challenging SEC disgorgement, determining appropriate remedies, and assessing loss causation and damages in private litigation, says Vyacheslav Fos at Boston College and Erin Smith at Compass Lexecon.

  • How Attys Can Use AI To Surface Narratives In E-Discovery

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    E-discovery has reached a turning point where document review is no longer just about procedural tasks like identifying relevance and redacting privilege — rather, generative artificial intelligence tools now allow attorneys to draw connections, extract meaning and tell a coherent story, says Rose Jones at Hilgers Graben.

  • How McKesson Ruling Will Inform Interpretations Of The TCPA

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    Amid the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates v. McKesson, we can expect to see both plaintiffs and defendants utilizing the decision to revisit the Federal Communications Commission's past Telephone Consumer Protection Act interpretations and decisions they did not like, says Jason McElroy at Saul Ewing.

  • Justices Rethink Minimum Contacts For Foreign Entities

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    Two recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, Devas v. Antrix and Fuld v. Palestine Liberation Organization, suggest that federal statutes may confer personal jurisdiction over foreign entities that have little to no contact with the U.S. — a significant departure from traditional due process principles, says Gary Shaw at Pillsbury.

  • Opinion

    High Court Must Overrule Outdated Patent Eligibility Doctrine

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    A certiorari petition should directly ask the U.S. Supreme Court to correct its 1972 patent decision in Gottschalk v. Benson, the critical point where patent eligibility law veered from the statutory text toward judicial policymaking, says Robert Greenspoon at Dunlap Bennett.

  • Examining TCPA Jurisprudence A Year After Loper Bright

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    One year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Chevron deference in Loper Bright v. Raimondo, lower court decisions demonstrate that the Telephone Consumer Protection Act will continue to evolve as long-standing interpretations of the act are analyzed with a fresh lens, says Aaron Gallardo at Kilpatrick.

  • Gauging The Risky Business Of Business Risk Disclosures

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    With the recent rise of securities fraud actions based on external events — like a data breach or environmental disaster — that drive down stock prices, risk disclosures have become more of a sword for the plaintiffs bar than a shield for public companies, now the subject of a growing circuit split, say attorneys at A&O Shearman.

  • How Justices' Ruling Limits Options To Challenge DHS Orders

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    In Riley v. Bondi, the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that a 30-day deadline for challenging deportation orders begins when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issues a final administrative review order, opening the door for the government to effectively bar circuit court review in future similar cases, says Kevin Gregg at Kurzban Kurzban.

  • Series

    Playing The Violin Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Playing violin in a string quartet reminds me that flexibility, ambition, strong listening skills, thoughtful leadership and intentional collaboration are all keys to a successful legal practice, says Julie Park at MoFo.

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