Public Policy

  • August 06, 2026

    Fired Immigration Judge Sues DOJ Over Bias Claims

    A Democratic immigration judge fired days before her position became permanent has sued the U.S. Department of Justice, saying the Constitution does not give the president authority to discriminate against civil service employees.

  • August 06, 2026

    FCC Orders Denver Billboards To Cease Operations

    The Federal Communications Commission has said two electronic billboards in Denver are interfering with T-Mobile signals and has ordered them to stop or face daily fines of more than $25,000.

  • August 06, 2026

    China Announces Trade Countermeasures After US Actions

    China's government will strengthen export controls on drones and their components as well as suspend coordinated inspections with U.S. officials and start new investigations into American businesses as countermeasures in response to recent U.S. actions implicating Chinese companies.

  • August 06, 2026

    Missouri Fires Back At Challenge To New Hemp Regulations

    Missouri officials asked a federal judge to throw out a suit challenging new regulations on intoxicating cannabinoid products, saying the hemp coalition and other companies that sued to block the law haven't shown they have standing.

  • August 06, 2026

    Hogan Lovells Cadwalader Adds Ex-Treasury Crypto Atty

    Hogan Lovells Cadwalader has hired a former Treasury Department counsel, who in his last role was the agency's first official dedicated to focusing on digital asset policy and blockchain technology, the firm announced Thursday.

  • August 06, 2026

    DOE Can't Force FOIA Filers To Reaffirm Old Requests

    A D.C. federal judge blocked the U.S. Department of Energy's requirement that Freedom of Information Act filers confirm their interest in pending requests filed before October 2024 within 30 days or face closure, ruling that the policy was never authorized in the FOIA statute.

  • August 06, 2026

    Feds Turn To 11th Circ. In Battle For Ga. Election Workers' Info

    Federal prosecutors told a district court it will ask the Eleventh Circuit to overturn a July decision to quash a U.S. Department of Justice subpoena seeking information about workers who helped handle the 2020 general election in Fulton County, Georgia. 

  • August 05, 2026

    New Mexico Says Blanche, DOJ Blocked Epstein Ranch Probe

    The state of New Mexico asked a Washington, D.C., federal court Wednesday to force the U.S. Department of Justice to hand over unredacted Jeffrey Epstein investigative files, saying it needs the materials for its own investigation of alleged crimes at the late sex offender's Santa Fe County ranch.

  • August 05, 2026

    Trump Admin Can't Deport Asylum Seekers Over Unpaid Fees

    A Massachusetts federal judge Wednesday temporarily barred the Trump administration from imposing consequences on asylum seekers who fail to timely pay an annual asylum fee, but refused to halt a one-year work authorization cap for those with temporary protected status.

  • August 05, 2026

    Defense Dept. Was 'Ostrich Burying His Head', Judge Says

    A Massachusetts federal judge Wednesday compared the U.S. Department of Defense's since struck-down reimbursement limit for grant-funded research to an "ostrich burying his head in the sand," awarding attorney fees to the academic organization that successfully challenged the policy.

  • August 05, 2026

    Senate Version Of Kids' Online Safety Legislation Clears Panel

    A key U.S. Senate committee Wednesday advanced four legislative proposals designed to shield children from online harms presented by addictive design features and artificial intelligence-powered chatbots, setting up a clash with a package of digital safety bills that has already passed the House but that several senators have blasted as "toothless."

  • August 05, 2026

    Wash. Landlords' COVID-19 Eviction Moratorium Suit Tossed

    A Seattle federal judge has thrown out a group of landlords' proposed class action challenging COVID-19-era eviction bans imposed by Washington cities and the state, saying Wednesday that appellate courts have recognized that landlord-tenant regulations generally do not qualify as physical takings of private property.

  • August 05, 2026

    Senate Dems Grill Trump's Judge Picks For 5th Circ., Alabama

    Senate Democrats on Wednesday dug into two judges nominated by the president to serve in Alabama district court and on the Fifth Circuit over their careful answers about who won the 2020 election and one's history of advocating against a ban on forced arbitration for workplace sexual harassment and assault claims.

  • August 05, 2026

    How Plaintiffs Won A $604M Verdict Against CH Robinson

    Roland Christensen of Arnold & Itkin LLP said that for the life of him, he couldn't understand why C.H. Robinson didn't cut a deal offered by the families of victims who burned to death following an 18-wheeler crash.

  • August 05, 2026

    5th Circ. Wary Again Of FCC's Control Over Subsidy Program

    A panel of Fifth Circuit judges on Wednesday raised new questions about the Federal Communications Commission's oversight of the country's $9 billion annual telecom subsidy program after a U.S. Supreme Court decision kept the fund intact last summer.

  • August 05, 2026

    Fed. Gov't Held In Contempt By Judge Over ICE Phone Data

    A California district judge held the federal government in contempt in litigation over immigration arrest tactics for not complying with a discovery order requiring forensic imaging of phones used by agents during their operations, imposing a fine of $500 per day until the government complies with the order.

  • August 05, 2026

    Incumbent Wash. Justices On Top In Early Primary Results

    Three incumbent Washington State Supreme Court justices — including two governor appointees — led their respective primary races Wednesday, as a state trial judge edged ahead in the race for another open seat on the high court, according to preliminary election results.

  • August 05, 2026

    Soldier Wants To Fight DOJ, CFTC Maduro Bet Cases At Once

    The U.S. Army soldier accused of reaping prediction market profits with his knowledge of the January operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro wants to fight parallel actions from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the U.S. Justice Department at once, and contends the government can't use his case as an "experiment" for how to police trading on platforms like Polymarket.

  • August 05, 2026

    Stewart Says Patent System 'Crisis' Fueled USPTO Changes

    Coke Morgan Stewart, the deputy director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office who left the agency last week, said in an interview with Law360 this week that new limits on patent challenges and other policy changes she helped lead were driven by a sense that the patent system was in "a pretty significant crisis."

  • August 05, 2026

    Kalshi To Block Wash. Betting But Said Pause Is Overbroad

    Kalshi agreed to implement geofencing restrictions by Aug. 26 to prevent people in Washington from making bets on the platform in accordance with a state judge's preliminary injunction, but the prediction market is still at odds with state officials over the scope of the court order.

  • August 05, 2026

    Kansas Judge Permanently Blocks Abortion Care Restrictions

    A Kansas state court has permanently enjoined a slew of restrictions on abortion care, including requirements that providers disclose patients' reasons for seeking an abortion to the state and inform patients about abortion pill "reversal" treatments the court said were "unlikely to be biologically plausible."

  • August 05, 2026

    DHS Wants To Hire Debt-Tracer To Track Down Deportees

    U.S. Customs and Border Protection is seeking bids for a contract to hire a private company to track down immigrants in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras who left voluntarily or were deported from the U.S. before paying off immigration-related fines.

  • August 05, 2026

    NYC's Food Apps Data Law Goes Too Far, 2nd Circ. Says

    A New York City law that would require DoorDash, GrubHub and other delivery apps to share customer data with the restaurants fulfilling food orders violates the First Amendment, the Second Circuit ruled Wednesday.

  • August 05, 2026

    FCC Returns $881M In Unused TV Broadcaster 'Repack' Funds

    The Federal Communications Commission said Wednesday that it has returned $881 million that went unused in the TV Broadcaster Relocation Fund.

  • August 05, 2026

    Ill. Feds Fight Contempt Proceedings In ICE Protest Case

    Federal prosecutors urged an Illinois federal judge Tuesday to reject further hearings and a special prosecutor over grand jury misconduct in a dismissed case against anti-ICE activists, arguing that the dismissal of the charges, the payout of their attorney fees, "substantial" internal reforms and a pending ethics probe render criminal contempt proceedings unnecessary.

Expert Analysis

  • Attorney Mental Health Is An Ethical Obligation In The AI Era

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    As attorneys cope with the increasing unpredictability that artificial intelligence and constant policy changes have created, particularly in practice areas where they carry the emotional weight of clients’ most consequential life events, otherwise soft discussions about self-care are a matter of professional competence, says attorney Jack Jrada.

  • Md. Ruling Reflects Classic Administrative Law Principle

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    A Maryland federal court's recent decision in Columbus v. Kennedy significantly limits how far the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services can go in reshaping the Affordable Care Act through regulation, highlighting a principle that will likely be applied in similar Administrative Procedure Act challenges, says Michael King at Brownstein Hyatt.

  • DOJ China Container Indictments Signal Global Cartel Risk

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    The U.S. Department of Justice's recent announcement that it had indicted Chinese manufacturers for conspiring to drive up the price of shipping containers sold in the U.S. illustrates the Antitrust Division's interest in pursuing overseas cartel conduct, especially in China, signaling that multinational companies with employees abroad should strengthen antitrust compliance to avoid running afoul of U.S. national security policy, say attorneys at Squire Patton.

  • More Cos. Will Copy SpaceX's Shareholder Proposal Opt-Out

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    For more than 80 years, the shareholder proposal looked like a federal right guaranteed to all public company investors, but after SpaceX opted out before its recent initial public offering, other companies are likely to follow, says Mohsen Manesh at the University of Oregon School of Law.

  • How DOJ Is Approaching Monitorship After Signaling Limits

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    As the U.S. Department of Justice keeps more monitors in place than expected, a look at the matters in which prosecutors are maintaining oversight reveals the sort of companies enforcers might trust to self-remediate, and also those that may receive independent supervision, say attorneys at Kendall Brill.

  • Opinion

    DHS' World Cup Influencer Warning Overreads Visa Law

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    The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s reported position that foreign influencers covering the 2026 World Cup need work visas if their content is monetized runs contrary to both legislative intent and long-standing precedent that structure the visa inquiry around labor market substitution, says Jun Li at Reid & Wise.

  • 3 Steps For Banks As Section 1071 Rule Finally Becomes Final

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    Some community banks and other lenders will get some breathing room in the final Section 1071 rule exempting them from small business lending reporting duties, but other reporting institutions should update applications, systems and staff training ahead of the 2028 compliance date, says Memrie Fortenberry at Jones Walker.

  • Why DOE Isn't Phasing Out Appliance Efficiency Regs

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    While the U.S. Department of Energy recently acted on President Donald Trump's 2025 executive order requiring it to consider sunsetting many energy regulations, the DOE has not proposed phasing out efficiency standards for appliances and industrial equipment — but it could pursue other approaches to ease such requirements, say attorneys at HWG.

  • Series

    Power To The Paralegals: Burnout As A Structural Problem

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    Law firm leadership can best retain their paralegals not by encouraging self-care, but by seeking top-down structural solutions for the quiet proliferation of responsibilities and the vicarious exposure to client trauma that particularly drive burnout in this vital role, says Erika Sneeringer at Brockstedt Mandalas.

  • Class Actions At The Circuit Courts: June Lessons

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    In this month's review of class action appeals, Mitchell Engel at Shook Hardy discusses five recent rulings from cases involving allegations of internet data misuse, consumer fraud claims, immigration, insurance and First Amendment violation claims.

  • Justices' FCC Fine Ruling May Weaken Agency Leverage

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    The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Federal Communications Commission v. AT&T upheld the commission's forfeiture framework as consistent with Jarkesy, but it is also likely to reduce the effectiveness of the commission’s forfeiture proceedings as a collection and deterrence tool, say attorneys at Venable.

  • Takeaways From 1st Del. Ruling Applying Moelis Amendments

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    Delaware corporations should carefully review contractual arrangements and governance documents following the Court of Chancery's recent enforcement of a non-Delaware forum selection clause in a CEO's employment agreement under 2024 amendments to the state's General Corporation Law, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.

  • Ill. Law Firm MSO Bill Clashes With Court Power, Ethics Rules

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    An Illinois bill prohibiting law firms from certain business arrangements with management service organizations, sent to the governor for signature last week, encroaches upon the courts' constitutional powers and goes beyond the Illinois Rules of Professional Conduct in regulating investment in law-related services, says Matthew O’Hara at Smith Gambrell.

  • Google Antitrust Case Puts Spotlight On De Facto Exclusivity

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    Mozilla's recent amicus filing in U.S. v. Google arguing that its agreement to make Google the default search engine did not amount to de facto exclusivity highlights the growing debate over traditional indicators of exclusivity, with implications for any business that uses rebates, preferred contracts or volume incentives, says Chris Gowen at WilmU Farnan School of Law.

  • Justices' Montgomery Ruling Doesn't Expand Shipper Liability

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    Whether negligent hiring liability claims against shippers will increase after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last month in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II is anyone's guess, but the ruling itself will have no impact on shippers' actual liability in personal injury claims relating to trucking accidents, says Ronald Leibman at McCarter & English.

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