Chief Judge Murguia sends a Seattle Race and Social Justice hostile-work-environment case to a jury, the Eleventh Circuit refuses to let a county moot a bail class by rewriting its policy mid-litigation, a gold mine cannot buy peace against a state from one citizen group, and the Seventh Circuit splits on vaccine mandate summary judgment.
In McCain v. Mary Mahoney's, the Fifth Circuit (King, J., with Smith and Ramirez, JJ.) holds a diner who paid premium prices for mislabeled imported frozen fish plausibly pleaded an Article III injury and reverses a Rule 12(b)(1) dismissal. Docket Watch: a Fifth Circuit per curiam quorum (Smith, Higginson) orders a new trial in Banner v. Wright because the district court relied on a juror's press interview in violation of Rule 606(b); ten Ninth Circuit judges dissent from denial of rehearing en banc in Whitfield v. Mullin, attacking the circuit's 'serious questions' preliminary-injunction test.
In Consumers' Research v. FCC, the Fifth Circuit (Clement, J., with Elrod, C.J., and Oldham, J.) holds the FCC violated the Government Corporation Control Act by establishing the Universal Service Administrative Company and vacates the Q4 2025 contribution factor. Docket Watch: the Eleventh Circuit (Newsom, J.) vacates the injunction against Georgia's SB 351 under Moody and rejects Section 230 preemption; a Fifth Circuit per curiam panel reverses summary judgment for broker GOL on Seacor Marine's maritime agency claims.
In FCC v. Brown, a per curiam Supreme Court stays the Fourth Circuit's mandamus order that gave the FCC 48 hours to rule on a pending application, calling the writ inappropriate where the Communications Act sets no deadline (Sotomayor and Jackson would deny). Docket Watch: the Eleventh Circuit (Newsom, J.) upholds Florida's HB3 social-media age law under intermediate scrutiny; the Tenth Circuit (Holmes, C.J.) affirms the SEC's Reven Holdings asset freeze entered without a hearing; the Third Circuit (Fisher, J., Restrepo dissenting) affirms dismissal of a retained-control claim against FirstEnergy; the Seventh Circuit (Sykes, J.) grants qualified immunity to a distracted-driving deputy.
Sitting en banc, the Eleventh Circuit (Jordan, J., for the court) overrules Mason v. Continental Group and its forty-year-old rule that ERISA plaintiffs must exhaust plan remedies before bringing statutory claims, calling it an atextual product of judicial creation and noting a 7-1-1 split. Also: the Fifth Circuit (Higginson, Willett, Oldham, per curiam) holds that Texas's $25 million supersedeas-bond cap does not apply in federal court, denying the Mulaceks' bid to stay a $210 million judgment on a $25 million bond; and the Second Circuit (Robinson, J., Sullivan dissenting) revives Santos v. Lidl, holding that time employees spend waiting for a manager to unlock the store is compensable waiting time, not Portal-to-Portal preliminary activity.
A Third Circuit panel (Krause, Freeman, Roth) affirms the denial of an insurer's bid to reach a defunct courier company's family shareholders for an $8.6 million breach-of-contract judgment, forecasting that Pennsylvania requires clear and convincing evidence to pierce the corporate veil and walking through undercapitalization, formalities, intermingling and fraud one factor at a time. Also: the Third Circuit (Chagares, Matey, Bove) dismisses RMI Insurers' challenge to the Imerys talc debtors' section 363 sale of indemnification rights to Johnson & Johnson as statutorily moot under section 363(m); and in Docket Watch, the Fifth Circuit (Smith, Haynes, Engelhardt) affirms a chiropractor's health care fraud sentence on the Hebron burden shift, holding that twenty-five patient declarations do not undo a pervasive-fraud finding because legitimate services are not the same as legitimate claims.
Fifth and Sixth Circuit orders this weekend show the fork opened by the Supreme Court's DHS v. D.V.D. third-country-removal orders: in Gakou v. Warden a Fifth Circuit per curiam (Smith, Southwick, Douglas) holds section 1252(g) strips jurisdiction over any stay of removal, while in Ojukwu v. Lyons (McKeague, Thapar, Murphy) the Sixth Circuit reaches the merits and holds that absent membership in the certified D.V.D. Rule 23(b)(2) class precludes the same policy-or-practice claim, warning that courts should always exercise caution when certifying nationwide class actions. Also: the Ninth Circuit (R. Nelson) reverses on NFMA road-mileage consistency, holding background noncompliance is excluded unless the project causes or contributes to it; the Fifth Circuit's 7-10 vote to deny en banc rehearing in Evans v. Garza, with Richman concurring and Ho and Oldham dissenting on a prosecution that went moot on the eve of the poll without vacatur; and in Docket Watch, the Sixth Circuit's Miles-El documentation rule for Title II accommodation and the Fifth's First Step Act credit-start holding.
The First Circuit (Rikelman, for Gelpí and Aframe) holds the group defamation rule bars Maine lobster companies' suit over Seafood Watch's red rating: factual statements about a 5,600-member fishery, a call to action, and lost customers do not supply the Second Restatement's particular-reference exception. Also: the Ninth Circuit (Tung) finds standing for a health-plan data disclosure in the historical breach-of-confidence action, parting from the Third, Fourth and Seventh Circuits; the First Circuit (Kayatta) revives Warner v. Amgen's leave to amend on a CBE newly-acquired-information theory while affirming preemption of the pre-approval claim; and in Docket Watch, Ginnie Mae's extinguishment of DIP collateral, the $25.18 million Justice guaranty, and the Voyager administrator's failed fraud claims against Metropolitan Commercial Bank.
A divided Sixth Circuit (Bloomekatz, joined by Stranch; Hermandorfer concurring in part and dissenting in part) revives a failure-to-train Monell claim against Knox County, Tennessee, over Ricky Lewis's overdose death in pretrial detention, holding that specific jail policies plus a comprehensive staff failure to follow them support the inference at the pleading stage even without allegations about the training program; the dissent calls it first-of-its-kind reasoning. Also: the Fifth Circuit affirms Pioneer Natural Resources' Winter Storm Uri force majeure win over MIECO after the remand bench trial and sorts industry-custom testimony from legal conclusions; the Fifth Circuit grants qualified immunity to an El Paso officer who tased a 70-year-old man with dementia and holds pattern evidence raised for the first time on appeal is waived; and in Docket Watch, the Eighth Circuit holds Heck dismissals count as PLRA strikes.
On remand from the Supreme Court, a per curiam Eleventh Circuit panel (Jordan, Jill Pryor, Kidd) holds the FTCA's discretionary-function exception bars the Martin family's claims over the 2017 Atlanta wrong-house FBI raid but reverses qualified immunity for the agent who led it, and all three judges concur urging en banc review. Also: the Third Circuit vacates a $61.6 million breach judgment against United Therapeutics in the treprostinil cartridge fight, affirms the antitrust dismissal, revives tortious interference, and holds Rule 28(i) adoptions do not count toward word limits; the Second Circuit applies the filed rate doctrine to Bloomberg's recovery-bond reclassification while Judge Park says Wegoland is wrong; and, in Docket Watch, the Eighth Circuit rejects constructive discharge in Pronk v. City of Rochester.
A per curiam Fifth Circuit panel (Smith, Southwick, Wilson) holds in Parish of Cameron v. Devon Energy that a docketed section 1447(d) appeal automatically stays a federal-officer remand under Griggs and Coinbase, joining the Fourth and Eleventh Circuits and leaving the Anti-Injunction Act no role. Also: Judge Douglas finds consumers have standing to challenge DOE appliance rules but sends them to the court of appeals in Word v. DOE, rejecting an ultra vires end-run; and a two-judge Ninth Circuit panel (Desai, Hurwitz) reverses the Arizona birth-certificate injunction in Roe v. Petersen by reading the statute's court-order provision as a catch-all.
A per curiam Ninth Circuit panel reverses summary judgment for Align Technology in the Invisalign antitrust class actions, holds that the rule of reason governs section 2 refusal-to-deal claims, and finds Align waived privilege by using its CEO's testimony as a sword; Judge Miller concurs only in the judgment and calls the balancing rule a significant and unwarranted expansion. Also: the Tenth Circuit openly splits with the Fourth, Eighth, and Ninth on jurisdiction-stripping after Mullin v. Doe (Tymkovich dissenting); Judge de Alba clarifies PREP Act causation in Schmidt v. Pasadena; and an Eighth Circuit panel affirms e-discovery costs over a Kobes dissent warning losing parties to expect bigger bills.
Judge McKeague reads the ADA's 60% entrance rule to end at the door frame over a Bloomekatz dissent; Judge Stranch holds an employer's bonus-clawback counterclaim is not FLSA retaliation while Judge Murphy questions whether the sham-litigation test belongs in the statute; the D.C. Circuit finds Basin Electric aggrieved despite prevailing at FERC; the Federal Circuit affirms Truinject's $100M damages loss on forfeiture and lets a patentee's own post-priority data defeat enablement.
Judge King holds the FDCPA originator exclusion requires collecting for another — and affirms anyway; a Texas stapler case dies on presuit notice and a hidden refile; four months is not a RICO pattern in the First Circuit; Judge Matsumoto builds the Groff undue-hardship record for hospitals over Judge Tung's dissent; Judge Ho on the audition trap.
The Sixth Circuit splits Hartman from Nieves across parking tickets, noise citations, and prosecutions; the Third Circuit calls Thomson Reuters v. Ross an ordinary copyright case and backs Westlaw's headnotes; and the Federal Circuit invalidates a patent that claimed the impossible.
Westlaw wins its AI-training copyright case, a thirty-year-old securities materiality rule is abrogated, the Second Circuit frees entire lawsuits from arbitration under the EFAA, BIPA's government-contractor loophole closes, and the Federal Circuit refuses an enablement end-run.
The First Circuit lets an arbitrator's bargaining-unit ruling stand against Harvard; the Ninth Circuit polices the Ellison and Au empires in the Hawaii Island Air collapse; a Tenth Circuit pension case turns on transitive verbs; and the Ninth Circuit declines, with eleven judges protesting, to revisit Oak Flat.
Judge Tung rules the False Claims Act's military-membership bar is jurisdictional, not an immunity, so no collateral-order appeal. Plus: Chief Judge Murguia sends a Seattle DEI-training hostile-environment case to a jury, the Eleventh Circuit revives a certified bail class after a same-day policy swap, Judge Lee and Judge Taibleson fight over what undue-hardship proof a hospital owes, a state wins back its suit after a citizen-group consent decree ambush, and an Oregon grievance form stops the limitations clock.
The D.C. Circuit upholds the Department of War's supply-chain exclusion of Anthropic's Claude, the Sixth Circuit says Kalshi's sports contracts are not swaps and states are not preempted, Alstom wins standing but loses a three-billion-dollar Buy America fight, and the Supreme Court's emergency docket revives a voter-citizenship database and rebukes the Eighth Circuit on Missouri's map.
The Ninth Circuit scraps its causal-nexus test for federal officer removal after Plaquemines, affirms a right-of-publicity class against Classmates.com, and rules a two-hundred-million-dollar HUD compliance deal was no alternate remedy under the False Claims Act, while the Third Circuit splits from the Fifth on Younger abstention and bail.
The First Circuit subordinates an $8.5 billion bondholder claim against Puerto Rico, the Ninth Circuit preempts a 300,000-person airport pollution class action and erases a $7.2 million Delta verdict, and a fungible-money fight over cash an FBI agent stole.
A Ninth Circuit panel wipes out a hundred-forty-million-dollar Fair Credit Reporting Act class verdict on Safeco grounds, the D.C. Circuit vacates a Capitol-steps injunction under CASA and sends a cable-royalty split back for its missing math, and the Federal Circuit revives a VA whistleblower who said the agency's AI slowed veterans' claims.