Spa Fights 9th Circ.'s 'Swinging Dicks' Order At High Court

By Jeff Overley

The Ninth Circuit's rejection of a spa's religious objections to serving transgender customers is incompatible with several major precedents, according to a U.S. Supreme Court petition filed Monday in litigation that soared in prominence when dozens of circuit judges decried a salacious dissent.

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Trump Revives Push To Reduce Kids' Vaccine Schedule

By Dan McKay

Responding to a legal setback, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday recommending fewer vaccines for most children and calling on parents and doctors to space out the vaccines they do give.

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Trump Picks Ex-Personal Lawyer As New White House Counsel

By Courtney Bublé

President Donald Trump's incoming White House counsel is a former personal attorney for the president who is already working for the White House and was at the U.S. Department of Justice during his first term.

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Brief

Trump Pick Confirmed To NCUA As Hauptman Joins PCAOB

By Jon Hill

The National Credit Union Administration is poised for new leadership after senators on Friday confirmed Trump nominee John Crews to its board, whose acting Chairman Kyle Hauptman has departed for a seat on the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.

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9th Circ. Won't Revisit Kids' Suit Over Trump's Energy EOs

By Lauren Berg

The full Ninth Circuit on Monday declined to rehear a group of youths' legal challenge of President Donald Trump's executive orders spurring the use of fossil fuels to meet the country's energy needs.

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Lack Of Fiduciary Duty Frees Chemours From NC PFAS Suit

By Mike Curley

Chemours Inc., its affiliates and DuPont Industrial Biosciences USA LLC on Monday got the dismissal of a proposed class action by a North Carolina resident over contamination of Brunswick County's water.

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Mass. Data Center's Expansion Paused For Now

By Carolyn Muyskens

A Massachusetts state judge temporarily blocked a data center's expansion plans in Lowell on Monday, finding opponents of the project may be poised to succeed on the basis that they weren't given a full opportunity to be heard.

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Alaska Looks To Defend Road Permit In Suit By Tribal Groups

By Corey Rothauser

The state of Alaska and a remote peninsula community want to join the federal government in defending a construction permit for a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge against a challenge brought by three Indigenous villages and an environmental group.

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9th Circ. Backs Wash. In PacifiCorp Carbon Law Regs Fight

By Rachel Riley

A divided Ninth Circuit panel declined on Friday to reinstate PacifiCorp's claims that Washington's carbon emissions cap-and-invest program unconstitutionally increases electricity prices for its out-of-state customers, concluding that the power company has not plausibly alleged the targeted regulations discriminate against interstate commerce.

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DHS Says Big Bend Border Wall Enviro Waivers Are Legal

By Elaine Briseño

Immigration officials told a Texas federal judge that construction of a barrier along the Mexico border near Big Bend National Park is a national priority and the need for quick construction outweighs compliance with numerous environmental laws.

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Crypto, Data Center Noise Has 'Shattered' NC Town, Suit Says

By Hayley Fowler

A cryptocurrency mining and artificial intelligence data center in rural North Carolina is emitting a cacophony that is destroying local residents' quality of life, according to neighbors who allege the operators have refused to take steps to mitigate the alleged nuisance.

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Clinics' Suit Over Fund Use Ballot Measure Gets Tossed

By Rae Ann Varona

A California federal judge tossed a suit that federally designated community health clinics filed to block the placement of an expenditure transparency reporting initiative on the November ballot, saying the clinics' claims aren't ripe for court review.

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AbbVie, Novartis Seek To Block Ill. 340B Drug Discount Law

By Gianna Ferrarin

AbbVie Inc. and Novartis Pharmaceuticals are urging an Illinois federal court to block a state law that took effect Friday barring pharmaceutical manufacturers from trying to impose restrictions on 340B contract pharmacy arrangements, arguing in a pair of suits that the law is unconstitutional.

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Michel, Startups Back Injunction Bid In Samsung Patent Case

By Ryan Davis

Former Chief Federal Circuit Judge Paul Michel, patent law professors and a group of startup companies on Monday backed Collision Communications Inc.'s bid for a permanent injunction on Samsung products found to infringe its patents, saying courts have misread U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

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Kalshi Loses Bid To Keep Conn. Betting Regulators At Bay

By Alex Lawson

A Connecticut federal judge denied Kalshi's bid to shield itself from the state's gaming regulators Monday, finding that the site's sports contracts likely flout state gambling laws.

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Mass. Home Sales Price Best Indicator Of Value, Board Says

By Sanjay Talwani

The purchase price of a Massachusetts home was the strongest indicator of its value at the time, a state tax board said in an opinion released Monday, upholding a local assessor's valuations.

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NJ Justices Rule No Purpose Needed In Takings Ordinances

By George Woolston

The New Jersey Supreme Court on Monday held that municipalities do not need to state the public purpose for which private property is being taken within the measure authorizing condemnation, backing a lower court's finding that a borough properly used eminent domain to take over a 50-room motel where it plans to provide parking and electric vehicle charging.

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Costco Can't Shake Wash. Workers' Moonlighting Class Action

By MJ Koo

More than 26,000 Costco Wholesale Corp. workers have beaten back the company's bid for an early win in their Washington state court moonlighting class action, though a judge also denied the workers' own push for a pretrial victory.

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9th Circ. Backs City Of Tacoma In Pension Liability Rate Fight

By Ben Adlin

A Ninth Circuit panel sided with the city of Tacoma, Washington, in a pension fund dispute Monday, holding that a lower court correctly upheld an arbitrator's reassessment of the city's liability after it withdrew from the Western Metal Industry Pension Fund following the expiration of underlying collective bargaining agreements.

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Calif. AG Says Paramount Deal Challenge Is About Antitrust

By Matthew Perlman

California Attorney General Rob Bonta pushed back Monday against Paramount Skydance Corp. CEO David Ellison's contention that a challenge of Paramount's Warner Bros. Discovery deal was politically motivated, saying the case is a "straight up antitrust enforcement case."

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Team Telecom Probing T-Mobile's Plan To Buy Fiber Co. Stake

By Nadia Dreid

T-Mobile has a $2 billion plan to acquire a 50% stake in a joint venture that seeks to combine two fiber companies, but the FCC won't say yea or nay to the deal until Team Telecom — a multiagency group that vets transactions involving foreign individuals and U.S. telecom companies — finishes looking into the matter.

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House Dems Seek AI Hearings After OpenAI, Anthropic Hacks

By Courtney Bublé

On the heels of major cybersecurity incidents with OpenAI and Anthropic, Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, is leading a group of House Democrats in calling for the heads of the major artificial intelligence companies to come before Congress.

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Judge Trims BCBS Privacy Suit Over Public Site Data

By Celeste Bott

Blue Cross Blue Shield Association beat most claims in a proposed privacy class action Friday when an Illinois federal judge ruled that federal employees' searches for doctors, symptoms and medical conditions on its public website did not amount to protected health information.

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DOJ Says Revealing Epstein Survivor IDs Wasn't Intentional

By Hailey Konnath

The U.S. Department of Justice, Google and xAI have all urged a California federal court to throw out claims the Justice Department published the identifying information of more than 100 survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, information that continues to be republished by Google and xAI, arguing that disclosure wasn't willful.

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OCC Takes Swipe At BofA In Post-Jan. 6 Data Sharing Suit

By Jon Hill

A top U.S. banking regulator has waded into a proposed class action accusing Bank of America NA of unlawfully sharing customer information with law enforcement after the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack, arguing the bank can't use a key regulatory safe harbor to exit the case.

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Calif. Unveils Novel AI Cyber Defense Plan For Critical Assets

By Allison Grande

California's governor on Monday rolled out a first-of-its-kind initiative to help state agencies, local governments and critical infrastructure providers use artificial intelligence to detect and respond to increasingly sophisticated cyberthreats and be better prepared for incidents fueled by emerging AI technologies.

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Denver Says Tobacco Cos. Should Pay For Cigarette Litter

By Benjamin Morse

Major tobacco companies including Philip Morris USA Inc. and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. knowingly shifted the cost of cleaning up cigarette litter onto Denver, the city alleged in a Colorado state court suit seeking to recover those expenses.

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Scammers Claim They're FCC Enforcers, Consumers Warned

By Christopher Cole

If a consumer is contacted by someone purportedly with the Federal Communications Commission claiming their phone number is being investigated and demanding personal and financial details, it's a scam.

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SBA Replaces 8(a) Program's Social Disadvantage Test

By Madeline Lyskawa

The U.S. Small Business Administration issued a final rule making it possible for small business owners to qualify for the 8(a) business development program by claiming they've been harmed by a company's DEI policies or a university's affirmative action programs.

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Judge Blocks DOD Military Label For Chinese Biotech Co.

By Tom Lotshaw

A D.C. federal judge temporarily blocked the U.S. Department of Defense from enforcing a decision to designate WuXi AppTec Co. Ltd. as a Chinese military company, ruling the department's justifications appeared to lack a grounding in the evidence they cited.

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Brief

China Places Antidumping Duties On US, Mexican Pecans

By Dylan Moroses

China will place preliminary antidumping duties on imported pecans from the U.S. and Mexico after concluding those goods are harming its domestic industry, the government said Monday.

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Feds Propose Regs On Trump Account Income Exclusion

By Kellie Mejdrich

The U.S. Treasury Department and IRS proposed regulations Monday on how employers can contribute to Trump Accounts, the new tax-advantaged brokerage accounts for children, along with guidelines on how to apply rules for nondiscrimination testing to those contributions.

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Mass. Board Says $4M Museum Barge Taxable Real Property

By Sanjay Talwani

A floating barge used in its current location since 2011 in a Boston Tea Party museum complex is real property taxable by local authorities, the Massachusetts Appellate Tax Board said in an opinion released Monday, upholding its $4 million valuation.

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Feds Target 3 More States Over Immigrant Tuition Benefits

By Ganesh Setty

The Trump administration announced Monday that it has filed new lawsuits targeting states that it says unlawfully extend in-state tuition benefits to unauthorized immigrants while discriminating against U.S. citizens from other states, this time against New York, Connecticut and Vermont.

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HHS Denies $150M Deal With Texas Firm To Rep Migrant Kids

By Tom Lotshaw

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said Monday that a small law firm in Houston had not yet been tapped for a sole-source grant worth up to $150 million to provide legal services to unaccompanied migrant children in government custody.

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DHS To Require E-Filing Of Certain Immigration Forms

By Ganesh Setty

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security released an interim final rule Monday enabling U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to mandate electronic filing of some immigration forms, which USCIS said would provide "substantial cost savings and greater efficiency."

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Brief

DOJ Creating Process For Marriage Broker Penalties

By Tom Lotshaw

The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday said it's setting up a procedure to handle claims for civil penalties against international marriage brokers for alleged violations of a federal statute regulating their operations.

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Catching Up With Delaware's Chancery Court

By Jarek Rutz

The Delaware Chancery Court last week tackled disputes involving merger settlements, contract claims, controlling stockholders, music rights, prejudgment interest, absentee voting and stockholder standing.

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ND Says High Court Ruling Sinks Tribes' VRA Claims

By Crystal Owens

North Dakota Secretary of State Michael Howe is asking for a judgment on the pleadings on two tribal nations' challenge to the state's 2021 legislative map following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling regarding Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, saying it's "manifestly obvious" that there's no longer a viable claim.

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Mich. Journalist Challenges Drone Law Over Police Ban

By Melanie Dorsey

A Michigan citizen journalist convicted of interfering with police by flying a drone near a law enforcement operation has sued Bay County officials in federal court, arguing that the state's drone law is unconstitutional when used to restrict nonobstructive recording and livestreaming of police.

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FCC Urged To Tighten 'Covered List' Regs

By Aneeta Mathur-Ashton

A foreign policy think tank has asked the Federal Communications Commission to adopt a more comprehensive set of regulations to bar devices containing parts that are made by entities on the agency's Covered List, which identifies equipment and services deemed national security risks.

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Conn. Town Wins Cop's Medical Marijuana, Discrimination Suit

By Aaron Keller

A Connecticut town has prevailed against a former police officer's discrimination claims tied to a training injury, comments by colleagues, a pension application and subsequent medical marijuana use, with a state judge issuing wins as a matter of law to the municipality and its officials on all four counts alleged.

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California FAIR Plan Is Outgrowing Last-Resort Role

With a recent rate increase, a litigation win and pending legislation to reshape operations, the California FAIR Plan is being regulated and reinforced as an apparent fixture of California's insurance market, rather than the temporary safety net originally intended, say attorneys at Jenner & Block.

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Data Center Risks Include Schedules, Supply Chain, Labor

Managing the dynamic technical and legal risks related to data center development requires sophisticated strategies for dealing with compressed schedules and liquidated damages, supply chain and long-lead equipment challenges, and labor shortages and productivity issues, say Randa Adra and Lily Geyer at Crowell & Moring, and Natasha Dahl at Ankura.

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Ill. Gov. Signs Bill Restricting PE Role In Legal Industry

By Emma Cueto

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has signed into law a bill designed to target nonlawyer ownership of law firms, outlawing fee sharing with out-of-state alternative business structures and attempting to place restrictions on law firms' use of managed services organizations.

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CREXi Can't Stay CoStar Case For Quinn Emanuel DQ Appeal

By Matthew Perlman

A California federal court rejected a bid Monday from Commercial Real Estate Exchange Inc., or CREXi, for a stay in CoStar's copyright case while CREXi looks to undo the disqualification of its attorneys from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP.

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Biz Owners Appeal Morgan Lewis Win In Tax Shelter Suit

By Andrea Keckley

A pair of business owners asked the Florida Supreme Court to reverse a decision affirming judgment in favor of Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP in a dispute over whether the law firm had routed income through illegal tax shelters.

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