Analysis

High Court Case Looms Over State Climate Superfund Fights

By Keith Goldberg

A federal judge has dealt a blow to the viability of state climate change Superfund laws, although experts say the ruling may ultimately be marginalized by a looming U.S. Supreme Court decision on the future of climate tort litigation against fossil fuel companies.

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Feature

3 Things To Know: Texas Judge Halts Abortion Drug Suit

By Mark Payne

A Texas federal judge has paused a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's approval of abortion medication mifepristone until after the agency has conducted a safety review of the drug. Law360 Healthcare Authority has what you need to know about that order and the legal landscape.

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11th Circ. Rules Qui Tam Provisions Don't Violate Constitution

By Madeline Lyskawa

The Eleventh Circuit on Tuesday held that the False Claims Act's qui tam provisions do not violate the appointments clause of the U.S. Constitution, maintaining private citizens' ability to sue entities on behalf of the United States for allegedly defrauding the federal government.

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5th Circ. Judge Hints Court Order With AI Errors Can't Stand

By Spencer Brewer

A Fifth Circuit judge wanted to know why a panel should keep intact a court order blocking an anti-DEI Mississippi law that contained artificial intelligence hallucinations, asking whether the judges could confidently find that made-up citations did not ultimately sway the district court's decision.

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Split 9th Circ. Rejects Biden-Era Entry Rule

By Ganesh Setty

A now-expired Biden-era rule limiting asylum eligibility for noncitizens entering from the southern border ran afoul of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Ninth Circuit ruled, noting the INA allows noncitizens to seek asylum regardless of how they entered.

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DC Circ. Reinstates Bergdahl Court-Martial Conviction

By Jared Foretek

The D.C. Circuit ruled Tuesday that a district court judge lacked jurisdiction to vacate Bowe Bergdahl's 2017 court-martial conviction for desertion, finding that only military appellate courts can directly overturn court-martial judgments and reversing a summary judgment decision that voided the conviction.

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Approach The Bench: Judge Rodriguez On The Uses Of AI

By Cara Bayles and Steven Trader

Today, Judge Xavier Rodriguez is known as an expert in electronic discovery and a proponent of artificial intelligence, but his interest was piqued before he joined the bench of the Western District of Texas in 2003, when he was still a lawyer and the methods for sifting through electronically stored information were still primitive.

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FCC Tells Justices To Keep Campaign Ad Pricing 'Status Quo'

By Katie Buehler

The Federal Communications Commission has joined a call for the U.S. Supreme Court to lift a Fourth Circuit order blocking it from extending discounted television and radio advertising rates to committees that buy spots in coordination with political candidates, urging the justices to maintain the "status quo," despite allegedly inconsistent characterizations of the norm. 

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Blumenthal Probes Claims USPS Defied Ballot Mail Orders

By Courtney Bublé

Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Senate investigations subcommittee, questioned the postmaster general on Tuesday on claims that the U.S. Postal Service defied a court order by continuing to implement the president's executive order restricting vote-by-mail.

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Conservative Think Tank Seeks TCPA Waiver To Make AI Calls

By Aneeta Mathur-Ashton

Economic think tank The Club for Growth has asked the Federal Communications Commission for Telephone Consumer Protection Act waivers to use artificial intelligence to make noncommercial calls.

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SEC Sends White House Plan For Retail Private Market Access

By Sarah Jarvis

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Investment Management has submitted to the White House a proposal to help facilitate retail investors' exposure to private markets and enable investment advisers to charge related performance fees, saying it could provide more opportunities for investors looking to diversify their portfolios.

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SEC Plans To Bless Transfer Agents' Blockchain Use

By Jessica Corso

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is promising sweeping changes to the rules governing transfer agents for the first time in 40 years, issuing a proposal Tuesday that would, among other things, allow agents to utilize the blockchain in tracking securities ownership. 

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ETF Issuers Urge SEC To Focus On Risk Over Novelty

By Aislinn Keely

Exchanges and issuers urged the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to apply existing rules for exchange-traded funds to oversee "novel" offerings holding asset classes like crypto and event contracts, while consumer advocacy groups took a hard line against products referencing sports or election wagers.

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EPA Grants 29 Small Refiners Renewable Fuel Exemptions

By Tom Lotshaw

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it has decided to exempt 29 small refiners from a total of nearly 1.8 billion gallons of renewable fuel blending requirements for the 2025 compliance year.

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Colo. Panel Mulls Enviro Groups' Challenge To Emission Rule

By Rachel Konieczny

Environmental advocacy groups urged a Colorado appellate court to revive their challenge to a state agency's rule on emissions monitoring, arguing Tuesday that the rule allows most polluters to escape certain monitoring requirements by paying a fee, while the judges focused counsel on questions of statutory interpretation.

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Enviro Groups Sue Forest Service To Halt Logging Project

By Rachel Riley

Environmental groups led by the Center for Biological Diversity launched a legal challenge in Washington federal court Monday to the U.S. Forest Service's approval of a logging project in the Methow Valley, saying the project would diminish old-growth forests and imperil Northern spotted owls and bull trout.

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Copyright Chief Says Cook Ruling Bolsters Firing Challenge

By Ivan Moreno

The U.S. Copyright Office's Shira Perlmutter has asked the D.C. Circuit to reverse a federal judge's refusal to block her firing by the Trump administration, arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court's June decision protecting Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook undercuts the lower court's reason for denying her preliminary relief.

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Unified, Industry Orgs. Again Push Justices On PTAB Policies

By Dani Kass

Unified Patents, Clearing House Payments subsidiary Askeladden and a series of industry groups have continued pressing the U.S. Supreme Court to accept petitions addressing the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's patent review authority, this time in a case brought by Tesla.

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Parler Ouster Talk Was 'Reaction' To Bad CEO, Jury Told

By Cara Salvatore

Billionaire Rebekah Mercer testified Tuesday that her team's strategizing about getting rid of Parler's then-CEO was simply "reacting" to his poor performance, even before the Jan. 6 insurrection sent the social media app "to hell in a handbasket."

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Foreign Air Carriers To Challenge FCC Altimeters Order

By Aneeta Mathur-Ashton

The International Air Transport Association is challenging a Federal Communications Commission order requiring aircraft serving the United States to upgrade their radio altimeters but limits reimbursements to domestic carriers.

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Lumen Beats $1.4B Pension Swap Suit

By Jade Martinez-Pogue

A Colorado federal judge on Tuesday ruled in favor of Lumen Technologies in a class action regarding $1.4 billion in pension obligations transferred to a risky insurance company, saying that plan participants could not show they suffered a current cognizable harm of loss of protections and the threat of impending injury was unconvincing.

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NLRB Urges Full DC Circ. To Respect Its Policy Views

By Braden Campbell

The National Labor Relations Board urged the full D.C. Circuit on Tuesday to rethink a recent panel decision limiting the court's regard for the agency's legal positions in a vigorous defense of the board's policymaking power after the U.S. Supreme Court scrapped a sweeping deference doctrine.

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4 Mass. Rulings You May Have Missed In August

By Julie Manganis

Three fertility doctors defeated claims they violated a nonsolicitation agreement, while a consulting company failed in its effort to amend a four-year-old contract suit that has already been extensively litigated, among other notable Massachusetts state court rulings in August.

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Treatment Centers Cited Over Unpaid Work By Patients

By Julie Manganis

Massachusetts' attorney general on Tuesday announced a first-of-its-kind citation of over $1 million against a faith-based substance use treatment program for allegedly having hundreds of participants perform unpaid work, including landscaping and moving, for businesses.

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Monthly Merger Review Snapshot

By Bryan Koenig

Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery pressured state attorneys general challenging their merger to settle, the Federal Trade Commission successfully challenged a construction adhesives tie-up, state officials waded in against the NextEra-Dominion transaction, and Union Pacific Corp. and Norfolk Southern Corp. defended their combination under review by federal regulators.

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Watchdog Sues To Unmask Feds' 'Secret' Frontier AI Review

By Lauren Berg

A nonprofit ethics watchdog accused the Trump administration in D.C. federal court Tuesday of failing to hand over information about the "secret de facto regulatory regime" governing frontier artificial intelligence models.

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Machine Guns, Silencers Aren't Protected By 2nd Amendment

By Parker Quinlan

A self-described "alt-right" conservative podcaster cannot have his firearms convictions overturned because a federal law banning machine guns does not violate his Second Amendment rights, the Third Circuit ruled Tuesday.

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Temporary Tariffs Exceeded Trump's Power, Fed. Circ. Told

By Jack McLoone

President Donald Trump illegally based his temporary tariffs on the misapplication of a law allowing the president to address balance-of-payment deficits, two businesses told the Federal Circuit, pushing the court to preserve a U.S. Court of International Trade ruling against the tariffs.

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Brief

3 Cos. May Be Dodging Golf Cart Duties, Customs Says

By Jack McLoone

U.S. Customs and Border Protection believes three golf cart importers may be evading duties on such vehicles and their subassmeblies from China, ordering interim measures at the investigation continues.

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Ireland Proposes Retail Investment Accounts With Flat Tax

By Kevin Pinner

Ireland wants to create accounts for Irish retail investors with a flat-rate tax on the account value above an exempted threshold, which would simplify the investment tax system compared to current rules, the government said.

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VA Judge Blocks Effort To Limit Local ICE Cooperation

By Aneeta Mathur-Ashton

A federal judge in Virginia granted the government's motion for a preliminary injunction to prevent the Commonwealth of Virginia's efforts to regulate cooperation between state, local and federal immigration enforcers.

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ICE Says It Will Ditch Detention Site Fought By City

By Kelcey Caulder

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security asked a Georgia federal judge to pause a city's suit attempting to block the conversion of an empty warehouse into a 10,000-bed detention center, saying the facility is no longer needed.

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Abbott, Paxton Feud Over Authority To Settle With Feds

By Ganesh Setty

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told a Texas federal court that he, as the state's "chief executive officer," must sign off on a potential settlement with the federal government over a border barrier dispute, feuding with his state's attorney general.

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Noncitizens Sue DHS Over 'Fine Everyone Policy'

By Jared Foretek

Five noncitizens have filed a proposed class action accusing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security of illegally fining noncitizens who enter the U.S. without authorization, issuing the fines retroactively and far from the border in violation of a narrowly drafted charging provision in the 2025 federal budget reconciliation law. 

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Teachers Union Wants In On CDL Data Fight

By Katherine Smith

The American Federation of Teachers is seeking to enter a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's bid to obtain a database containing information on 17 million commercial driver's license holders, telling a Virginia federal court Tuesday that the 24 states bringing the suit don't adequately represent the interests of the union.

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HHS Seeks 9th Circ. Review Of Tribal Opioid Clinic Order

By Joyce Hanson

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has appealed to the Ninth Circuit for a review of a lower court order requiring the HHS' Indian Health Service to fund a Pechanga Band of Indians' opioid treatment facility.

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DirecTV Says Emergency Alert Symbols Are A Hard Sell

By Nadia Dreid

The Federal Communications Commission's heart was in the right place when it floated the idea of requiring emergency alerts to include visual symbols, but satellite television providers just aren't set up to display those symbols, DirecTV has told the agency.

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Satellite Permitting, Robocall Bills Sail Through Subcommittee

By Nadia Dreid

The SAT Streamlining Act was one of half a dozen bills that breezed through a House energy and commerce subcommittee Tuesday afternoon, with lawmakers managing to get all six bills sent along to the full committee in under an hour.

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Congress Approves Bill Delaying Hemp Ban One Month

By Sam Reisman

The U.S. House of Representatives gave final approval Tuesday to a stopgap spending bill which includes language to delay implementation of a federal ban on products containing hemp-derived THC by one month.

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Cozen Affiliate Adds 4 From Closed McDermott Shop

By Alison Knezevich

More former staff members of McDermott Will & Schulte's shuttered healthcare lobbying and consulting shop in Washington, D.C., have landed new roles, with Cozen O'Connor Public Strategies announcing Tuesday it hired a four-person team from there.

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NJ Gov. Renews Judicial Advisory Panel With 5 Newcomers

By Carla Baranauckas

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill expanded and reshaped the state's Judicial Advisory Panel on Monday, issuing an executive order that adds an eighth seat on the panel and replaces four of its longtime members, including three former state Supreme Court justices who had served under previous administrations, with new appointees.

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DOJ Fraud Declination Highlights Self-Disclosure Tradeoffs

As exemplified by the U.S. Department of Justice's declination of charges against Campus Eye Management under its new corporate enforcement policy, self-disclosure can be an attractive option for healthcare companies navigating criminal exposure, but should be weighed against potential costs, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.

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SEC's Long-Awaited Crypto Rule Is 1st Piece Of Larger Puzzle

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's recently proposed crypto rule provides issuers with a workable exempt offering framework but leaves holder-side questions for forthcoming rules, meaning compliance officers and counsel will have to work from an incomplete picture for now, says Josh Burton at Silver Regulatory Associates.

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DOE Energy Financing Overhaul Opens Paths For Developers

The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Dominance Financing is now positioned to be a key source of support for energy and critical minerals development in the U.S., creating opportunities for companies seeking to advance projects that align with administration priorities, say attorneys at Mayer Brown.

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What Nonbank Lenders Should Watch In 'Open Banking' Redo

Nonbank mortgage lenders should prepare for several key changes in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's anticipated open banking rule rewrite that could reshape verification costs, vendor relationships and loan workflows, says Kara Ward at Baker Donelson.

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Thomson Reuters Cyberattack Hits North American Courts

By Bonnie Eslinger

A recent cyberattack on Thomson Reuters' court management software affected files associated with court systems in 11 states, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Canada, and may have exposed sealed documents and individuals' personal information, according to a Wednesday announcement from the technology and information services company.

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Calif. Bill Regulating Atty AI Use Heads To Newsom's Desk

By Emily Sawicki

A bill regulating attorneys' and arbitrators' use of generative artificial intelligence has unanimously passed the California State Legislature and is headed to Gov. Gavin Newsom's desk.

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'Astonished' Homebuyer Says Atty Email Lapse Caused Hack

By Pete Brush

A New York City law firm has been ordered to provide internet security and login information to a homebuyer who claims she was left in "shock" when an impostor with access to her lawyer's email tricked her into wiring away over $730,000.

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House Rejects Amendment To Fix Court At 9 Justices

By Courtney Bublé

The House failed to pass a proposed constitutional amendment on Wednesday that would keep the number of U.S. Supreme Court justices at nine.

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Dems Call Subpoenas' Secrecy Request 'Abuse Of Authority'

By Aneeta Mathur-Ashton

Democratic lawmakers Sen. Ron Wyden, Ore., and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Wash., have called for an investigation into subpoenas issued from federal law enforcement to private companies that contain nondisclosure provisions and carry threats of legal consequences for noncompliance.

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Tyson's Price-Fixing Deal Merits $27.5M Atty Fees, Buyers Say

By Dorothy Atkins

Beef direct purchasers asked a Minnesota federal judge Tuesday to award class counsel $27.5 million in fees, or one-third of Tyson's $82.5 million price-fixing settlement, arguing that the deal was reached after six years of hard-fought antitrust litigation and adds to another settlement, bringing the total recovery to $135 million.

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JPMorgan Seeks Stay Of $20M Javice, Amar Fee Order

By Jarek Rutz

JPMorgan Chase & Co. urged the Delaware Chancery Court on Wednesday to pause enforcement of an order requiring it to advance more than $20 million in disputed legal fees to convicted Frank founder Charlie Javice and former executive Olivier Amar, arguing the bank could permanently lose the money before it gets a chance to challenge the ruling.

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ABA Outlines Attys' Duties To Clients With Intellectual Limits

By Jack Karp

Attorneys have the same obligations to clients with decision-making limitations, should abide by those clients' decisions regarding their representation and must work to maintain an ordinary client-lawyer relationship as much as possible, the American Bar Association said in an opinion released Wednesday.

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