Analysis

4 Key Takeaways From The Senate Permitting Legislation

By Keith Goldberg

Bipartisan permitting legislation unveiled in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday could be a game-changer for how quickly energy infrastructure projects get built, though the bill faces a long, difficult path to becoming law. Here are four takeaways from the proposal.

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Justices To Review Trump's No-Bond Migrant Detention Policy

By Britain Eakin

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to review whether the Trump administration can detain unauthorized immigrants without bond until their immigration cases conclude, regardless of whether they had already been living in the country.

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Judge Should Penalize Meta $40B In Latest Trial, NM Argues

By Cara Salvatore

The state of New Mexico asked a judge Thursday to penalize Meta $35 billion to $40 billion for statements that a jury found grossly misrepresented the social media giant's actual data privacy practices, while Meta argued no harm was proven and the damages should be in the $345 million to $3.45 billion range.

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6th Circ. Backs Immunity In Search Of Empty Home

By Susan Smiley

Michigan state troopers who searched a vacationing couple's home while attempting to execute a bench warrant are protected by qualified immunity because existing case law has not established that such a search is a violation of constitutional rights, a Sixth Circuit panel said Wednesday.

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NY Judge Scraps ICE Immigration Court Arrest Policy

By Tom Lotshaw

A New York federal judge vacated a 2025 policy change that gave U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents "unfettered discretion" to arrest noncitizens at immigration courthouses after the government admitted guidance cited for the shift never applied to immigration courts.

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States Sue Trump Over 'Theft' Of $810M Congressional Funds

By Lauren Berg

California and six other states sued the Trump administration in San Francisco federal court, alleging the executive branch's unlawful clawback of $810 million that was appropriated by Congress for a number of programs that the president dislikes is "tantamount to theft."

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Trump Announces Judicial Noms For 5th Circ., NC

By Courtney Bublé

President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he's nominating Todd Butler, a managing partner at Phelps Dunbar LLP, to serve as a judge on the Fifth Circuit. 

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Judge Reinstates Rogoff As Seattle US Atty After Trump Firing

By Rachel Riley

A Washington federal judge issued an order from the bench on Thursday reinstating Roger Rogoff as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington, finding that President Donald Trump exceeded his authority when he fired him in July.

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Blackburn Holds Up White House's Tenn. Judge Pick

By Courtney Bublé

The White House is standing by its nominee for a federal judgeship in the Eastern District of Tennessee amid a holdup from Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., a White House official confirmed to Law360 on Thursday.

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Pa. Justices Keep But Decry $250K Damages Cap In $7M Case

By P.J. D'Annunzio

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has opted to preserve the $250,000 limit on damages claims against state agencies, with the majority of justices rejecting a constitutional challenge to the cap because it doesn't impede a plaintiff's right to a jury trial, only the amount of recovery.

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Ga. Official Defeats DOJ Bid To Force Handover Of Voter Info

By Kelcey Caulder

A federal judge threw out a U.S. Department of Justice suit seeking to force Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to hand over an unredacted copy of the state's voter registration list, unpersuaded by the federal government's claims that the state's failure to produce the records was unlawful.

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Interview

Exit Interview: SEC's Hester Peirce On Crypto, Clarity And AI

By Jessica Corso

Outgoing U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissioner Hester Peirce doesn't mind being referred to as "Crypto Mom" for her work championing the industry, but she thinks investors should know: "The government is never your mom."

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SEC Changes Quorum Requirements As Peirce Exits

By Jessica Corso

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has changed its quorum requirements for the first time in 30 years, clarifying that only one member of the agency needs to vote on enforcement and regulatory matters as Commissioner Hester Peirce prepares to leave Friday. 

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SEC Floats Crypto Custody Rule Updates For Funds, Advisers

By Aislinn Keely

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday proposed updates to custody rules that would allow investment advisers and funds to hold clients' crypto with state trust companies or safeguard the assets themselves if they can't find a suitable custodian.

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FDIC Says Workplace Culture Monitorship Has Ended

By Jon Hill

The Morrison Foerster LLP attorney hired to oversee the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s efforts to address past issues with workplace misconduct has concluded her assignment after two years on the job, declaring the agency "well positioned" to move forward.

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NY, Wyo. To Collaborate For Faster Crypto Reviews, Exams

By Aislinn Keely

Financial regulators in New York and Wyoming on Thursday said they have agreed to collaborate on crypto oversight in ways that could cut down on duplicative review processes and exams for fintechs operating in both states.

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Colo. Judge Needs More Info In Energy Agency Records Fight

By Zach Dupont

A Colorado state judge said Thursday that she needs additional briefing before deciding if the deliberative process privilege under the state's open records law shields the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission from providing meeting minutes sought after in a public records request.

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Blue States Fight EPA Rollback Of Power Plant Climate Rules

By Ganesh Setty

A New York-led coalition of mostly Democratic states and municipalities lodged a petition on Thursday before the D.C. Circuit challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's recent repeal of Biden-era limits on greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants.

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Water Utilities Say EPA Rule Defines Them Too Broadly

By Gautama Mehta

The fate of a federal plan to eliminate the nation's lead drinking-water pipes may come down to a debate over the definition of a public water system.

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Judge Bars HHS Medicaid Cuts For Wash. Noncitizens On SSI

By Elaine Briseño

A federal judge has temporarily halted the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' attempts to cancel Medicaid benefits to noncitizens in Washington state receiving supplemental security income, finding the loss of benefits could lead to permanent disability or death.

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Home Health Co. Seeks Pause Of Colo. Agency's Backout

By Rachel Konieczny

A Colorado home personal care services company exclusively serving those insured by Medicaid urged a state judge Thursday to pause a Colorado regulatory agency's decision to terminate its provider agreement, contending any transition of clients to other providers should come after an administrative court hearing later this month.

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NH Families Seek To Block Medicaid Ban On Youth Trans Care

By Gianna Ferrarin

Transgender adolescents and their parents urged a New Hampshire federal court Thursday to block the Trump administration's plan to cut off Medicaid funding for minors' gender-affirming care, arguing it's unconstitutional, motivated by discriminatory animus and violates the Administrative Procedure Act.

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Trump Says Copyright Chief Can't Stay In Office Amid Appeal

By Adam Lidgett

The Trump administration is urging the D.C. Circuit to let it remove U.S. Copyright Office leader Shira Perlmutter, arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision protecting Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook for now does not entitle Perlmutter to remain in office while her firing challenge proceeds.

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Albright Tells Inventors That Attys Should Talk A Lot Less

By Theresa Schliep

Former U.S. District Judge Alan Albright told attendees at a US Inventor conference Thursday that litigators should speak less in jury trials, while current and former U.S. Patent and Trademark Office leadership highlighted the agency's overhaul to patent challenges and touted its reduction of the backlog.

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FCC Officially Ditches Race, Ethnicity, Gender Reporting Reqs

By Nadia Dreid

The Federal Communications Commission has officially done away with a rule that required TV and radio broadcasters to disclose data about their employment diversity to the agency after the Fifth Circuit struck the rule down last year.

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Pa. Justices Back Transit Prosecutor Law Challenged By DA

By Matthew Santoni

The Pennsylvania Legislature's creation of a "special prosecutor" to address Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner's allegedly unsatisfactory handling of crime in the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority does not run afoul of the state constitution because of the city's special status, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

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Kalshi Looks To Shield Sports Offerings At 2nd Circ.

By Alex Lawson

Prediction market giant Kalshi has asked the Second Circuit to shield its sports offerings from Connecticut gaming enforcers, drilling down on its position that those offerings ought to be immune from state scrutiny.

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Dems Want FHFA To Restore Internal Watchdog's Funding

By Isaac Monterose

A group of 11 Democratic U.S. Senators told the Federal Housing Finance Agency on Thursday not to proceed with "unlawfully slashing" the FHFA's Office of Inspector General budget for fiscal year 2027.

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Colo. Energy Rules Can't Shake Federal Preemption Suit

By MJ Koo

A federal court allowed real estate industry groups' suit challenging Colorado's and Denver's building energy-performance standards to move forward, finding the groups plausibly alleged the regulations are preempted by federal law governing appliance efficiency standards while tossing their claims about consumer appliances as untimely.

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Airlines' Fight Over Colo. Sick Leave Law Heads To Trial

By MJ Koo

A Colorado federal court has sent an airline industry group's challenge to the state's paid sick leave law to trial, finding that competing expert testimony about whether the law increases employee absences and disrupts airline services creates factual disputes that a judge cannot resolve before trial.

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Fla. Police Officers Denied Immunity In Ex-GOP Chair's Suit

By Parker Quinlan

A federal judge in Florida has refused to toss a civil lawsuit against two Sarasota Police Department detectives, finding they are not entitled to qualified immunity from claims they violated the Fourth Amendment rights of a former Florida Republican Party chair during a 2023 sexual assault investigation.

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Ga. City Fired Worker Who Reported Harassment, Suit Says

By David Aaro

A Georgia city has been sued in federal court by a former employee who said she was smeared in a local newspaper by colleagues before accusing a city manager of sexual harassment and getting fired for speaking up.

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Brief

Calif. Gov. Vetoes Expanded Menopause Bias Protections

By Grace Elletson

California's governor rejected legislation passed by lawmakers that would have added menopause to the definition of "sex" under the state's anti-discrimination statute, reasoning that the move would have been redundant and could have triggered unnecessary litigation.

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DOJ's RealPage Deal Doesn't End States' Antitrust Claims

By Matthew Perlman

A North Carolina federal court has refused to toss antitrust claims from state enforcers accusing RealPage of providing software that allows residential building owners to inflate rents, despite RealPage's settlement in the case with the U.S. Department of Justice.

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Google Ad Tech MDL Teed Up For Trial Largely Intact

By Bryan Koenig

Gannett, the Daily Mail and a certified class of website publishers scored a major win with a New York federal court ruling largely refusing to let Google scrap antitrust allegations targeting its advertising placement technology business in sprawling multidistrict litigation.

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Monthly Merger Review Snapshot

By Matthew Perlman

State enforcers settled their case challenging Paramount Skydance's planned $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, while the U.S. Department of Justice probes Fox's planned $22 billion deal for Roku and regulators review massive deals in the energy and railroad sectors.

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Brief

Customers Ask 9th Circ. To Halt Paramount-Warner Bros. Deal

By Nadia Dreid

Streaming service customers are asking the Ninth Circuit to step in and stop Paramount Skydance's planned $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery until a court can decide if their antitrust suit challenging the merger will be dismissed.

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Calif. Gov. Pushes For More In Signing Bill Limiting CIPA Suits

By Allison Grande

California's governor approved legislation Wednesday to block private litigants from bringing lawsuits under one provision of the California Invasion of Privacy Act, while urging the Legislature to keep working on efforts to expand this ban to include additional website tracking claims under the decades-old wiretap statute.  

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Bipartisan Legislation Floated To Fight Foreign-Website Piracy

By Elliot Weld

The two chambers of Congress have introduced related legislation that would allow U.S. courts to direct internet service providers to block foreign criminal and piracy sites within the U.S.

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CFPB Couldn't Verify Security Of Tech Left In Offices, IG Says

By Jon Hill

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau left computer equipment sitting in its now-closed regional offices for more than a year and a half without confirming that the hardware, and any sensitive material on it, was locked down, a federal watchdog said Thursday.

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Family Of Renée Good Sues Feds Over Fatal ICE Shooting

By Britain Eakin

The family of Renée Good, who was killed in January when an immigration officer fired gunshots into her car earlier this year, sued the United States on Thursday, along with the officer and other federal officials involved in the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.

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Flint Beats Protest Claims After Lawyer Disqualified

By Melanie Dorsey

A Michigan federal judge has dismissed a civil rights suit accusing Flint officials and police officers of violating protesters' constitutional rights during a 2025 march, months after the judge disqualified the protesters' attorney over his connection to a law firm barred from practicing in Michigan courts.

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DuPont, Corteva Accused Of $40B PFAS Asset Shielding

By Craig Clough

The company formerly known as DuPont and its parent Corteva Inc. were sued in Indiana state court Thursday by 15 states and Guam alleging a newly completed seeds business spinoff is nothing more than an illegal effort to place $40 billion in assets beyond the reach of creditors pursuing forever chemicals claims.

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Vape Co. Eyes Intervention In FDA E-Cigarette Suit

By Jonathan Capriel

The maker of the flavored e-liquid brand Naked 100 wants to defend the current U.S. tobacco policy allowing vape products to enter the market without full approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, telling a federal court that reversing the rule could push its products off shelves.

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Pentagon Calls Stars And Stripes Its Own Government Speech

By Jared Foretek

Military newspaper Stars and Stripes qualifies as government speech and can therefore be controlled without violating the First Amendment, according to the new brief from the U.S. Department of Defense and top Pentagon brass in their bid for a summary judgment win over members of the paper's board.

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Analysis

4 Questions About EU And Canada's Vow To Strengthen Ties

By Dylan Moroses

The European Union's invitation for Canada to become an associate member of the bloc raises questions about the potential practical and political ramifications of such an effort. From technical details on what that membership might look like to political obstacles and how the U.S. fits in, here are four questions facing the endeavor.

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11th Circ. Told Maduro Owes $217M, Not Venezuelan Oil Co.

By David Minsky

Venezuela's state oil company told the Eleventh Circuit that it shouldn't be forced to pay a $217 million judgment owed to the family of a political opposition leader who was tortured and killed by his government, arguing Thursday that it was never an agent of former dictator Nicolás Maduro. 

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Walmart Hit With New Tariff Suit As Refund Blitz Continues

By Brian Steele

Walmart must compensate customers who "bore the economic burden" of Trump administration tariffs before the U.S. Supreme Court struck them down in February, according to a proposed class action in Connecticut federal court that claims the retail behemoth has no plans to share its $2.9 billion refund.

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Brief

Commerce Probes Aluminum Composite For Duty Evasion

By Jack McLoone

A Chinese company's aluminum composite panels may be designed to circumvent duties on common alloy aluminum sheet imported from the country, the U.S. Department of Commerce said Thursday, announcing an investigation.

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Ore. Tax Break Denied For Homeowner Living Out Of State

By Sanjay Talwani

An Oregon homeowner staying in Washington state to care for her 82-year-old brother is ineligible for a property tax deferral because she doesn't live in the Oregon home, a state court ruled, rejecting her plea for a health exemption to the residency requirement.

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Calif. Judge Vacates Trump's $100K H-1B Fee Policies

By Britain Eakin

A California federal judge has vacated the implementing policies underlying President Donald Trump's $100,000 H-1B visa fee, saying the federal agencies charged with implementing the fee ran afoul of rulemaking procedures required by the Administrative Procedure Act.

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Ill. Judge To Probe Misconduct In ICE Protester Prosecution

By Lauraann Wood

Further fact-finding is necessary to determine whether any misrepresentations or inaccuracies Chicago prosecutors offered while pursuing a since-tossed criminal conspiracy case against six immigration protesters amounts to misconduct warranting contempt or sanctions consideration, an Illinois federal judge said Thursday.

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DOJ Outlines New Corporate Fraud Enforcement Priorities

By Phillip Bantz

Federal prosecutors "must place great weight" on a new list of factors when considering potential charges in corporate fraud cases, including whether the matters involve government programs, threats to national security or immigration offenses, according to a memo released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Justice.

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7th Circ. Won't Rehear Enbridge's Wis. Tribal Trespass Fight

By Joyce Hanson

The Seventh Circuit has refused to rehear Enbridge Energy's petition seeking to overturn a decision that its Line 5 pipeline is trespassing on Wisconsin tribal lands, but also sent back to a lower court a $5.2 million restitution order for a portion of the pipeline's removal.

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Ex-Actavis Exec Escapes Some Drug Price-Fixing Claims

By Carla Baranauckas

A Connecticut federal judge has dismissed a swath of claims against a former executive of Actavis and Taro in the generic drug price‑fixing litigation brought by state enforcers, holding that evidence was insufficient to prove he joined several alleged single‑drug conspiracies.

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Ex-DOJ Atty Reopens Practice, Starts Consulting Firm

By Alison Knezevich

A former U.S. Department of Justice official announced Thursday that he has returned to private practice at the law firm he founded.

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Testing AI's Promise For Large-Scale Document Review

Our document-review comparison of attorneys' responsiveness and issue coding decisions versus predictions generated by artificial intelligence across 1,600 documents suggests that these tools can offer a reasonable and reliable basis for improved discovery workflows, provided lawyers understand where guardrails are needed, say attorneys at Redgrave.

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Calif. AV Notices Reshape Crash Data Preservation, Discovery

California's new autonomous vehicle noncompliance notice process does not decide fault or establish that an AV is unsafe, but it can create a contemporaneous regulatory record and accelerate decisions about what crash-related data must be preserved, reviewed and potentially disclosed in litigation, says attorney Lem Garcia.

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DC Circ. Ruling Highlights Limits Of DOE Grid Orders

The D.C. Circuit's recent decision in Michigan v. U.S. Department of Energy, vacating a DOE order to keep a coal-burning power plant open, gives utilities more insight into the durability of federal orders premised on protecting grid security, say attorneys at ArentFox Schiff.

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Opinion

CFTC's New Award Policy Punishes Whistleblower Success

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission recently capped four whistleblower awards because it considered them too large, arguing that it could lead to frivolous reporting, but the move instead penalizes the program for its own success and flies in the face of the framework enacted by Congress, say attorneys at Whistleblower Partners.

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UCLA Law Is Latest DOJ Target Over Race Bias In Admissions

By Dorothy Atkins

The U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division accused the UCLA School of Law of discriminating against white and Asian students in its admissions process in a letter sent to the school's counsel Thursday, following multiple other similar letters that the DOJ sent to other higher-education institutions.

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Richards Layton Atty Confirmed To Join Del. Chancery Bench

By Rose Krebs

Delaware's Senate on Thursday confirmed a Richards Layton & Finger PA director to a 12-year term as a vice chancellor on the Chancery Court.

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FBT Gibbons Beats DQ Bid In Suit Over Cigna Payments

By George Woolston

A New Jersey state court judge has rejected a plastic surgery practice's bid to disqualify FBT Gibbons LLP from representing Cigna and a group of employer-sponsored health plans in its suit over the insurer's alleged underpayments, finding the bid appears more of an effort to gain an advantage rather than one to protect the interests of any client.

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Roundup

The Top In-House Hires Of September

By Michele Gorman

Legal department hires during the past month included high-profile appointments at MSG Sports, Nestle and the Associated Press. Here, Law360 Pulse looks at some of the top in-house announcements from September.

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