Legal
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Legal articles
The Public Charge Rule Has No List, and That Is the Point
Twenty-two states and a coalition of cities sued to block the green-card benefits rule four days before it takes effect, arguing its undefined scope forces immigrant families to drop programs they legally use.
Musk Dropped Apple From His Antitrust Lawsuit and Kept OpenAI
X Corp and SpaceXAI moved to dismiss their claims against Apple with prejudice, disclosing no terms, while the same Texas lawsuit against the OpenAI entities continues.
A Second Federal Judge Just Blocked the Mail-Ballot Rule
Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, enjoined the Postal Service's ballot-mail rule in its entirety, finding it beyond the agency's statutory powers, with a Supreme Court application still pending.
A Gun License Denied in 2023 Is Now a Massachusetts Supreme Court Case
The SJC will hear argument October 7 in Pratt v. Westbrook, testing whether the state's "suitable person" discretion survives the Supreme Court's Bruen test.
A Federal Court Said Clean Water Is Not a Constitutional Right
The Fifth Circuit, sitting en banc, dismissed the Jackson water lawsuit 10-5 and split openly with the Sixth Circuit's Flint rulings over what the Fourteenth Amendment protects.
After a 2,000-Product Recall, the FDA Asks a Court to Close the Warehouse
Federal prosecutors want a permanent injunction against a Minneapolis distributor whose warehouse inspectors found full of rodents, birds, and gnawed product, eight years after its first warning letter.
A Pardon Erased the Supreme Court's Immigration Bond Case
A New York pardon mooted Genalo v. G.M. before the Court could hear it, leaving the Second Circuit's bond-hearing rule standing and the constitutional question unanswered.
Imran Ahmed's Deportation Fight Now Rests on Five Business Days
A federal judge dismissed the British activist's lawsuit challenging his potential deportation, while keeping a temporary restraining order alive long enough for an appeal.
Washington Accuses Six Chinese AI Firms of Industrial-Scale Copying
A joint FBI, NSA and CISA advisory names DeepSeek, Alibaba and four others, alleging billions of tokens were extracted from American frontier models.
One Louisiana Case Could Decide How Abortion Pills Reach Every State
The Fifth Circuit heard arguments Tuesday in Louisiana v. FDA, a challenge that seeks to end telehealth prescribing and mailed mifepristone nationwide.
A Court Counted 42,695 Unlawful Disclosures in the IRS-ICE Data Pipeline
The D.C. Circuit has upheld an injunction against the IRS sharing taxpayer addresses with immigration authorities, and the opinion reads like an audit of a data handoff gone wrong.
Missouri's Secretary of State Must Answer to Two Courts at Once
The state Supreme Court has opened a contempt probe into Denny Hoskins over the congressional map fight, while a federal judge keeps ordering him to use that same map.
The Map That Never Existed Now Decides Missouri's Election
Hours after the Supreme Court declined to intervene, a federal judge ordered Missouri to use a congressional map its own state supreme court says never took effect, leaving election officials caught between two orders.
Oklahoma's Proxy Adviser Law Arrives Where Three Other States Already Lost
ISS is asking a federal court to block Oklahoma's Proxy Advisor Transparency Act before it takes effect November 1. The law requires written financial analysis for any recommendation against management, and the same model has already failed in three states.
The False Claims Act's Whistleblower Engine Survives Its Constitutional Test
An appeals court has ruled that private citizens who sue fraudsters on the government's behalf are not constitutional officers, reversing the ruling that threatened the False Claims Act's enforcement machine. The bigger fight is now headed toward the Supreme Court.
Australia Lets Users Switch Off the Feed and the Platforms Still Choose the Default
Australia's My Feed, My Way bill would force social platforms to offer users a real choice over algorithmic feeds. The fight is not over the opt-out; it is over which feed the platform is allowed to make the default.
Two More Newspapers Sue OpenAI While Washington Sides With OpenAI
The Seattle Times and Newsday filed a copyright and DMCA suit against OpenAI and Microsoft in the same week the Justice Department told a Manhattan court that AI training is fair use.
SEC Moves to See the Client Votes Behind ISS Advice
The Securities and Exchange Commission is asking a federal court to force proxy adviser ISS to export four years of client voting data, a records fight that turns on whether proxy advice is protected speech or regulated work.
The Pandemic Fraud That Ran Through the Answer Desk
An Ohio inspector general report says three contract call-center workers steered $3.3 million in pandemic unemployment benefits to claims they controlled, five years after the money went out.
Google Keeps Its Ad Stack and Gets New Auction Rules
Judge Leonie Brinkema refused to break up Google's advertising technology and instead imposed conduct remedies, a choice rooted in one uncomfortable finding: the market moved faster than the case.
The Farmworker Wage Rule Survived in One Piece and Died in Three
A federal judge upheld only the survey switch in the Labor Department's H-2A wage rewrite and struck down the tiering, the housing deduction, and the reasoning behind them, leaving employers facing possible back pay.
The Beef Price Probe Just Moved From Packers to Grocers
The Justice Department asked eight retailers for six years of beef pricing records, expanding an investigation that began with the four meatpackers that control most of the country's processing capacity.
The AR-15 Question Now Has a Court Date
The Supreme Court will hear consolidated challenges to assault-weapons bans in Illinois and Connecticut on December 2, and the Solicitor General has filed on the challengers' side. The argument will turn on what "common use" means.
Ballots Are in the Mail and the Rules Are Still in Court
With midterm ballots already entering the mailstream, the third Supreme Court appeal in the mail-ballot fight turns on a narrow question about who regulates the envelope.
California Just Retired Its Most Misused Wiretap Law
A law written for phone taps became the engine of 4,000 lawsuits over website analytics. SB 690 shuts that engine down, and the litigation is already migrating to the next theory.
One Vendor's Incident Touched Court Records in 11 States
A cybersecurity incident at Thomson Reuters' C-Track platform shows what happens when a decade of court digitization funnels millions of case files through a handful of vendor clouds.
Amazon's Ad Auction Ran on a Bidder That Did Not Exist
The FTC and 22 states say Amazon's "second-price" ad auction quietly stopped being second-price. The case turns on a price that was never printed.
The UPM-Sappi Merger Is a Fix for Decline, and That Is What Worries Regulators
UPM and Sappi want to merge their European graphic paper businesses to manage a market that has shrunk by double digits for years. The European Commission's objection rests on the same fact the merger does: in a dying industry, consolidation is both the rational response to decline and the riskiest thing left for the customers who still need the product.
The Standard of Care on Trial in Seattle Was Never Written Down
Washington's opioid case against Albertsons hinges on a standard of care that the state's own pharmacy regulator admits was never written into any law or rule. The verdict, expected in September, may be the first full adjudication of what a pharmacy chain owed during the prescription era.
The World's Biggest Generic Drugmaker Is Accused of the Branded Playbook
Turkish antitrust regulators are investigating Teva for patent-system manipulation and disparaging rivals, echoing a 2024 European Commission fine of 462.6 million euros for the same conduct around Copaxone. The accusation sits on the seam between the two companies Teva is: the generic challenger and the branded defender.
A Chemical Plant's Real Product Is Its Neighbors' Forbearance
Melrose Industries is funding a claims program worth up to $100 million after a chemical tank emergency evacuated 50,000 Garden Grove residents. The fund pays for the countable damages, hotels, wages, transportation, but the real account it is trying to restore is the neighborhood's willingness to keep living beside the plant.
The US-Canada Tariff War Is Being Fought Over the Small Stuff
When trade talks collapsed and tariffs hit, both countries chose their targets with striking precision, hitting beer, lumber, and appliances while carefully sparing energy, the flows neither side can actually afford to disrupt.
A Court Can Order Redfin Back Into Rentals, Not Into Rivalry
The FTC settled its antitrust suit against Zillow and Redfin by ordering Redfin to rebuild the rental listings business it was paid $100 million to exit. The order can mandate presence in the market. It cannot mandate the will to compete.
What "Material" Means in a Bank Exam Is a Fight Over Who Gets the Last Word
Regulators propose rewriting the CAMELS bank rating system around issues that present material financial risk, but leave "material" undefined. More than sixty comment letters reveal the fight is really about who holds examiner discretion.
Two Forever Chemicals Stayed on the Superfund List, and the Route to Add More Just Opened
A federal appeals court upheld the EPA's Superfund listing of PFOA and PFOS. The bigger consequence is legal: the court confirmed the agency's mechanism for adding substances by regulation, opening the door to the rest of the PFAS class.
The Drug-Testing Fight That Is Really About Who Gets to Be Believed
Valisure is suing the standards body USP over a white paper it says disparaged its testing methods. Neither party sells pills. Both sell a claim about drug safety, and the lawsuit is a fight over whose word counts.
Restricted Endowments Look Like Money Colleges Can Use in a Crisis. Being Unusable in a Crisis Is the Entire Point.
Nearly 200 private colleges drew on restricted donor endowments in 2025, mostly for operating expenses rather than the purposes donors specified. A restricted gift is a legally binding promise, not a reserve, and the real wrong is usually not redeployment but doing it without consent.
Investors Allege Five Below Blamed Theft to Mask a Deeper Decline. Clearing Them to Sue as a Class Isn't a Finding That They're Right.
A federal judge certified an investor class action against Five Below, unlocking class-wide damages. Certification decides a procedural question about reliance, not whether the company committed fraud, and the underlying theory alleges a false cause, not a fake number.
The FTC's Case Against Hims Looks Like Three Complaints. It's Really One Business Model.
Frictionless conversion, sticky subscriptions, and pixel-based ad targeting built Hims. The FTC's three allegations are what happens when that playbook meets healthcare law.
Fauci Pleaded the Fifth. To Take That Right Away, Rand Paul Would Have to Give Up His Case.
Fauci's Fifth Amendment invocation and Paul's pardon theory contain a contradiction that runs to the heart of the hearing itself.
The New Student Visa Rule Sets a Four-Year Clock. A PhD Takes Five to Six. That Gap Is the Whole Problem.
A fixed four-year visa term routes nearly every foreign PhD student through a discretionary checkpoint in the middle of long, stability-dependent research.
Rand Paul Wants Two Things From Fauci's Testimony. They Work Against Each Other.
A hearing built to both extract information and manufacture legal jeopardy tends to accomplish neither, because the second goal silences the witness the first one needs.
An Outright Ban on Drug Ads Would Probably Lose in Court. The Rule the FDA Is Already Writing Might Not.
Public Citizen wants drug ads banned outright. The FDA is quietly pursuing something similar through a disclosure rule, which is legally a very different animal.
$1.2 Billion Went Into LA's Graffiti Towers. They Just Sold for $470 Million.
A bankruptcy judge cleared the sale of Oceanwide Plaza. The 60% haircut is a lesson about what happens to money once it's poured into a building that stops.
The Grant Applications That Never Get Written Won't Show Up in Any Data
A proposed OMB rule would put political appointees in the approval path for every federal grant. The larger effect operates on what researchers decide to propose.
Novo Sued Lilly Over GLP-1 Ads. Lilly's Defense Is Better Than It Sounds.
Novo says Lilly compares its highest doses against Novo's lower ones. Lilly says it cites the only head-to-head trial that exists between the two drugs.
A Tesla-SpaceX Merger Wouldn't Be a Merger. It Would Be a Transfer of Control.
Musk holds 42% of SpaceX equity and 85% of its voting power. Any combination converts Tesla shareholders' governance rights into that structure.
A Fugitive Reportedly Spent Months as a Public Company's Chief Medical Officer. The Screening Question Is the Story.
A man on Rhode Island's most-wanted list for 20 years was reportedly hired in March as a biotech's chief medical officer. The vetting gap it exposes is one most companies share.
The Fed Just Banned a Banker for Life. He Didn't Forge Anything, He Just Stopped Asking Questions.
A former chief lending officer is permanently barred from banking over inflated appraisals he didn't create, only approved without questioning.
Homeowners Say 26 Lenders Fixed Mortgage Prices Through Software. The Defense Is One Word: "Recommend."
A class action accuses Optimal Blue and the country's biggest lenders of coordinating rates. The defense borrows from the RealPage rental-pricing fights.
Bank Regulators Just Changed How They Handle Exam Secrets. A Nation-State Hack Is Why.
The Fed, FDIC, and OCC announced new rules for guarding confidential bank data. A foreign government reportedly broke into the OCC first.
Rivian Just Got Sued Again Over EV Demand. This Time the Target Is the Board Itself.
A new derivative suit in Delaware Chancery targets Rivian's directors personally, a different animal from the securities class actions.
A Senate Bill Fixes a Quirk That Punishes Rural Broadband Co-ops for Being Locally Owned
Being owned by 500 neighbors triggers the same SEC rules built for Wall Street. A bipartisan bill finally closes the trap.
New Jersey Is Overhauling Newborn Drug Testing. The Reform Hinges on a Fact About the Tests Themselves.
A poppy-seed bagel can trigger a positive. New Jersey is rewriting the rules that let one such result open a child-abuse investigation.
UChicago Law's AI Plan Banned Laptops. That's the Least Interesting Part.
Read the actual strategy and it's not anti-AI, it's a deliberate bet about what makes a lawyer valuable in an AI world.
A Waymo Called the Cops on Its Own Passengers. The Real Story Isn't the Teenagers.
The car didn't hand over footage after the fact. It decided, in the moment, to intervene, and that's the part worth watching.
Homeowners Are Suing First American Over Its Property Database. The Legal Theory Could Reshape the Whole Industry.
The class action's real argument: a commercial sales funnel is legally different from just republishing public records.
Nespresso Must Face a Race-Bias Suit From a Worker It Reportedly Used as the Face of Its Diversity Program
A federal judge just ruled most of her claims can proceed, past the point where the company could make the case disappear on the pleadings alone.
She Clocked Out, Left the Store, Jaywalked, and Got Hit by a Car. Pennsylvania Says Workers' Comp Still Covers It.
A court awarded her comp anyway, on two rulings that sound backwards until you understand how the law actually works.
A Jury Hit WakeMed With $18.2M for a Birth Injury. Here's the Medicine and the Law Behind That Number.
The number looks arbitrary until you understand the injury it describes, and why a verdict this size is rare in North Carolina.
A Mother Beat UnitedHealth Over Her Son's Mental Health Care. The $630K Isn't the Point.
A Utah judge ordered UnitedHealth to pay $630,000 for denying a teen's mental health treatment. The payout is trivial. The decade-long pattern isn't.
Massachusetts Employment Law in Late 2026: The Noncompete Case Every Employer Should Be Watching
A class action against Boston Beer could decide whether the token payments behind many noncompetes are worth anything at all.
First Brands Wants to Cut Retiree Benefits. The Real Story Is Which Retirees Have a Safety Net and Which Don't.
First Brands' pensions were rescued by a federal backstop. Its retiree health and life insurance have no such guarantee, and that gap is the real story.
Intel and Google Are Asking the Supreme Court to Rein In the Patent Office. Here's Why It Matters.
A tribunal Congress built to kill bad patents is turning challengers away at one official's discretion, using rules never put to public comment.