U.S. v. Baxter, decided today by the Eighth Circuit, upheld a conviction for "possessing a firearm as an unlawful drug user in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3). The Supreme Court's recent U.S. v. Hemani decision held that unlawful drug user (at least when the drug is marijuana) doesn't inherently strip away the user's Second Amendment rights, and thus concluded that some applications of § 922(g)(3) are unconstitutional. But it left open the question of what other applications might be constitutional:
We do not … address whether the government could bring a prosecution under § 922(g)(3) accompanied by individualized proof that the defendant's use of marijuana (or any other drug) renders him a danger to himself or others. Or proof that a certain drug always renders its users dangerous because of its potency or for some other reason. None of those issues is before us and we do not pass on them either way.
Quoting that language, the Eighth Circuit concluded that Hemani didn't dispose of the case. And it held that Baxter's conviction was indeed consistent with Second Amendment. First, from the facts:
On May 21, 2023, gang members from two gangs—Strap and C-Block— began fighting in downtown Des Moines, Iowa. Baxter, a Strap gang member, was involved in this fight. When law enforcement attempted to break up the fight, the gang members ran in opposite directions, but resumed fighting 30 minutes later. The officers again approached, and Baxter and other Strap members chased the C-Block gang. As the officers were pursuing the chase, a bystander told them that Baxter had a gun.
The officers then confronted Baxter and asked what was in his pocket. Baxter responded, "nothing" and ran from the officers. He was apprehended shortly thereafter. The officers searched Baxter and found a loaded pistol and a baggie of marijuana on his person. The officers then obtained a search warrant to test Baxter's urine for the presence of controlled substances; the test confirmed the presence of THC or marijuana metabolites….
And from the legal analysis, by Judge Bobby Shepherd, joined by Judges James Loken:
Second Annual Aspiring Free Speech Scholars Workshop jointly sponsored by the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law (ASU)
and the Hoover Institution (Stanford University)
Because of a technical problem, any submissions before June 4, 2026 were lost; please resubmit (or submit for the first time) at the new URL listed below, https://tinyurl.com/aspiring-free-speech-scholars
Are you a law student, judicial law clerk, lawyer, or beginning academic hoping to publish a journal article on free speech law? Would you like the opportunity to get advice about your draft from leading free speech scholars?
If so, send us your draft by Sunday, August 16, 2026. (This should still be a draft article, not an article that's already published or expected to be published within six months.) We plan to select the submissions that we think are particularly promising, and invite their authors to a workshop where they can present their papers and get helpful feedback on them. The workshop will be Saturday, October 24, 2026 (with dinner the night before) at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law in Phoenix. We will inform the selected authors by Tuesday, September 8, 2026.
We have funds to pay for transportation and lodging for the selected authors' trips. Eligibility is limited to people who have so far published three or fewer law-related journal articles.
Important progress has been made on repaying illegally collected tariffs. But serious problems remain, including some caused by the Trump Administration's efforts to keep some of the illegally collected loot.
My Cato Institute colleagues Scott Lincicome, Alfredo Carrillo Obregon, and Chad Smitson have a helpful post updating the situation on refunds for Trump's illegally imposed IEEPA tariffs. In February, the IEEPA tariffs were invalidated by the Supreme Court, in a case I helped bring and litigate (along with the Liberty Justice Center, and others). But before that happened, the Trump administration collected some $166 billion in illegally collected tariffs. As Lincicome, Obregon, and Smitson (LOS) explain, there has been important progress getting refunds for the importers who were illegally forced to pay, but serious problems remain:
Here's where things stand.
On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court invalidated the tariffs that President Trump implemented last year under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). As of June 29 (more than four months after the ruling), CBP has authorized $104.29 billion in refunds and paid out $71.06 billion (including interest). Based on our calculations of the total amount owed by the government as of June 29 (taking into account interest and payouts), the government still owes importers about $100.65 billion—more than half of the total owed…
CBP deserves credit for giving most eligible importers the opportunity to receive refunds—even if the process was not automatic. It's also good that CBP has now rolled out Phase 2 of its refund (CAPE) system, covering entriesflagged for reconciliation. Refunds could eventually climb to $130 billion of the $166 billion in IEEPA duties paid by importers (before interest).
Eventually.
Indeed, that only $71.06 billion of the approved $104.29 billion has actually been paid suggests that frictions built into the CAPE process are creating obstacles for importers seeking refunds. For example, CBP claims that refunds for 8,384 approved declarations have not been issued because the eligible importers lack proper automated clearinghouse or banking information.
Some of the slowness here is likely due to ordinary bureaucratic inefficiency. The federal government has never had to issue tariff refunds on such an enormous scale before. But some is also due to the Trump administration's efforts to try to keep some of the illegally collected loot. AS LOS note, the administration has appealed the injunction issued by Judge Eaton of the US Court of International Trade ordering payment of refunds to all importers who were forced to pay the illegal tariffs. At least when it comes to "finally liquidated" tariff entries, the administration claims they only have to pay refunds to those businesses that filed individual lawsuits seeking them.
In previous posts about the refund issue (see here and here), I explained why Judge Eaton was right to issue a universal injunction, even in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's ill-advised strictures against such injunctions in Trump v. CASA, Inc. (decided last year). Among other things, Trump v. CASA only applies to cases brought under the Judiciary Act of 1789 and its successors. The CIT's jurisdiction comes from a separate statute enacted in 1980.
As LOS also note, the refund process may be stacked against smaller importers, often making it difficult or impossible for them to get what they are owed.
Overall, it's good that many victims of the illegal tariffs are getting refunds. But it's a travesty that almost 60% of the money still hasn't been repaid almost five months after the Supreme Court decision. Meanwhile, interest accrues on those illegal tariffs that haven't been repaid yet, and taxpayers will be on the hook for that additional money.
LOS go on to point out that my former colleagues on the IEEPA case, the Liberty Justice Center and Georgetown law Prof. Neal Katyal (who argued our case before the Supreme Court), have filed a class certification motion to create a class action seeking refunds for all those importers who paid IEEPA tariffs but are not currently eligible to get refunds under the system set up by the CBP.
I am not a class action expert. But I think such a class certification makes good sense. The proposed class seems to clearly meet the requirements of Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which include, 1) "numerosity" (the class is large enough to make joinder of all individual plaintiffs impracticable, 2) "commonality" (common questions of law and fact), 3) typicality (the claims of the class representatives litigating the case are typical of the class as a whole), and 4) "adequacy" (the representatives can adequately defend the interests of the class in court).
It is obvious the class is large enough, as it includes many thousands of businesses who paid the tariffs but cannot currently get refunds. The potential class members also have common legal issues (they all were forced to pay the tariffs, but cannot currently get refunds for similar reasons). The claims of those of my former clients who cannot get refunds are typical of others in the same situation. And, though I may be biased in favor of my former co-counsel, more objective observers cannot deny they are capable of litigating the issues more than adequately! LJC successfully litigated the IEEPA case from start to finish, and Neal Katyal is one of the nation's leading appellate litigators. But the government is opposing the class action certification, and we will have to see what appellate courts decide.
I've said it before and I will say it again here: the administration's recalcitrance in paying and the various bureaucratic difficulties in getting refunds even to those the administration admits should get them, are a reason why courts should not stay injunctions against illegal tariffs while litigation continues. That's what happened in our IEEPA case, and is how we ended up with over $166 billion in illegally collected tariffs (an amount that has since grown, given accumulated interest). In addition, even full repayment of illegally collected tariffs cannot make up for all the harm they caused, as there is no compensation for higher prices paid by consumers, lost sales caused by price increases, and a number of other harms to importers, consumers, and the US economy as a whole. Sadly, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit failed to learn these lessons when it comes to the current litigation over Trump's illegal Section 122 tariffs.
Thus, the tariff refund saga seems likely to continue, perhaps for many months to come. I tentatively expect that a large majority of the illegally collected tariffs will eventually be repaid, with interest. But some of the harm they caused cannot and will not ever be addressed.
NOTE: As I have previously noted, I am no longer a member of the V.O.S. Selections legal team, because my role ended after the Supreme Court issued its decision. Thus, I am not involved in the refund phase of this litigation.
According to the First Amended Complaint ("FAC"), Plaintiff Syed Ammar Ahmed … is a practicing Muslim of Pakistani descent who served as an adjunct instructor at IRSC from 2019 until his termination on March 1, 2024. IRSC informed Plaintiff that he was being terminated based on a purported "security alert" indicating that he appeared on an "FDLE Homeland Security database" for "terrorist threats." Plaintiff alleges that no such database exists and that the allegation was false. IRSC's Chief of Campus Safety directed Plaintiff to a 2020 article by Joe Kaufman accusing Plaintiff of being an "Islamist," "racist," and "socialist," and referencing Facebook posts Plaintiff made as a minor between 2009 and 2013. Plaintiff alleges that IRSC relied on this article and anti-Muslim stereotypes in terminating him.
Plaintiff further alleges that internal IRSC emails obtained through a Florida Sunshine Act request show that by April 5, 2024, IRSC's Campus Safety office had "cleared" Plaintiff and concluded he posed no threat. According to the FAC, IRSC leadership drafted a reinstatement letter following this clearance but never sent it, and Plaintiff received no communication from IRSC for nearly five months.
Plaintiff alleges that this failure to reinstate him was not inadvertent. Rather, he asserts that Defendant [Timothy] Moore, the Chancellor of the Florida College System, personally intervened to prevent his reinstatement, directing IRSC officials not to send the reinstatement letter and insisting that the termination remain in place despite the internal clearance. Plaintiff further alleges that contemporaneous emails show IRSC administrators understood Moore to be closely monitoring the matter and seeking updates regarding Plaintiff's status.
Plaintiff alleges that a member of the Florida Board of Education brought the 2020 Kaufman article to Moore's attention, encouraged Moore to act on the article, and thereby played a role in initiating and perpetuating the action taken against him. Plaintiff contends that Moore acted on this encouragement and maintained the termination even after IRSC's own safety personnel determined that Plaintiff posed no threat.
Plaintiff was ultimately reinstated on August 28, 2024—within an hour of IRSC receiving Plaintiff's public records request seeking internal communications about his termination, the April 5 clearance, and the withheld reinstatement letter. Plaintiff filed his EEOC charge on February 20, 2025….
The court allowed plaintiff's constitutional claim to go forward:
Lawyering requires care and attention to detail. No less an authority than Daniel Webster explained, "If he would be a great lawyer, he must first consent to become a great drudge."
A lawyer who comes to court and asks a judge to do something for his client has a professional obligation to take time to think carefully and in granular detail about the relief that he's requesting to make sure it's warranted. In addition, the lawyer should do his level best to make the judge's life as easy as possible. Make exhibits accessible. Prepare them in a way that makes sense. Review and comply with the judge's procedures. Don't do things that shift work from lawyer to judge. In short, think about a submission as a whole—whether it enables the judge to address it or whether it interferes with those efforts, and whether it conveys to the judge that a lawyer gave its preparation due care.
The lawyers in this case have fallen short of those obligations in connection with their submissions of summary judgment motions, a supporting statement of facts and exhibits, and a related motion to seal. They do not identify the specific documents they seek to seal or even which documents fall into the categories of information they seek to seal. They propose to seal categories of documents for which there could be no possible basis to seal. And they submitted a summary judgment record that is unnecessarily difficult for me to parse because they have submitted exhibits that are at the same time duplicative and needlessly disjointed.
The fact that these problems arise in the context of a motion to seal is, unfortunately, no surprise. Too often, lawyers treat those motions as an afterthought. The result is a submission that lacks detail about the reasons for sealing and the specific harm that would arise from disclosure of any particular piece of information.
Those failures leave me, as the steward of the public's interest in access to judicial records, to do work that the lawyers should have done to justify whether a document belongs under seal. That's what has happened in this case. It shouldn't be my job to do the lawyers' work for them, and so this opinion will call out the multitude of ways that the lawyers in this case have fallen short in their submissions.
A nice line from Daniel Webster, quoted by Judge Joshua Wolson (E.D. Pa.) July 8 in Estate of Funkhouser v. Delaware County. As Judge Wolson notes, this is because "Lawyering requires care and attention to detail."
The October 2025 Term of FantasySCOTUS finally came to a close. On the whole, this term was a one of the most predictable terms I can recall. In the aggregate, our crowd predicted 94.74% of the cases accurately, up from 76.36% of the cases accurately last term.
I am happy to announce that the Chief Justice is Kirill Muzyka. He is a repeat winner from last term. Players receive ten points for each correct prediction of a Justice's vote. We recorded 57 merits cases (DIGs do not count).
I usually ask the winner several questions to figure out their approach to predicting cases. Kirill's response was so thorough and insightful, that I reproduce it in its entirety:
As a reminder, I am Kirill Muzyka, originally from Russia and still living in London — though no longer as a student, but now trying to find a job. This term, partly because I had more free time, I spent even more of it following the Supreme Court — and occasionally wondering whether I should apply to a U.S. law school. In the meantime, I have also started a small media project in Russian, where I try to make the American political and legal systems more accessible to a Russian-speaking audience.
My approach to predictions remains broadly the same. I start with oral argument, make my first prediction based on what the Justices said there, and only then bring in background considerations such as previous votes or judicial philosophy.I prefer this mathod because many wrong predictions, I think, come from interpreting oral argument through a preexisting narrative. For example, I was puzzled by how many commentators seemed to think there was serious doubt about Justice Barrett's vote in Watson v. RNC. To me, she clearly telegraphed at argument that she was going to side with Mississippi. My guess is that the uncertainty came less from the argument itself than from background assumptions about the case and about her.
The current oral argument format makes this method more useful. Because each Justice now has extended time to ask questions, they usually have enough room to identify the concerns that actually matter to them. Some Justices are more transparent than others. Justice Jackson, for instance, often makes it possible to predict not only her vote, but almost the structure of her eventual opinion, based on her questions — or, really, her monologues. But the broader point is that the format gives close listeners a lot of information.
At the same time, this approach has real limits. Because I still do not usually read the briefs before making predictions, I sometimes miss nuances that are not fully visible from oral argument alone. The Justices may sound hostile to the broadest version of a party's theory, but still vote for that party on narrower grounds. Particular dispositions can also be hard to predict. My biggest mistake this term was Case v. Montana: based on oral argument, I thought the Court would vacate because the wrong standard had been applied, but it instead applied the correct one and affirmed. I had a similar problem in Pung v. Isabella County. It was clear the Justices would reject the petitioner's theory, as they did, but I was much less sure whether they would affirm or vacate.
There is also the familiar problem that Justices sometimes play devil's advocate. Justice Alito, for example, can be very aggressive toward a side he is usually unsympathetic to — criminal defendants, for instance — even when the case ultimately ends in a unanimous decision that he joins without writing separately. Abouammo and Ellingburg were two such cases this term. The Chief Justice and Justice Kagan also tend to ask hard questions of both sides, which makes them harder to read; that is how I missed their votes in Monsanto and Al Otro Lado, respectively. The Chief also speaks relatively little.
I like to relisten to oral arguments after reading the opinions, to see how the argument translated into the final decision. Sometimes that makes the outcome much clearer in retrospect. But there are still missed predictions I cannot fully explain even afterward. I was almost certain Justice Kavanaugh would vote with the liberals in Saba, and after relistening to the argument I still think that was the most reasonable conclusion to draw from them. I was also very surprised by the unanimous result in Hemani: after the argument, it seemed almost certain to me that Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito would vote against Hemani, and quite likely that Justice Kagan would as well. Galette was another case that left me confused. After oral argument, I was certain that the Justices were divided, but the final decision was unanimous, with no separate writings. As I said last year, high-profile cases are often easier to predict, though not always. I was still very surprised by Justice Gorsuch's vote in Barbara and Justice Barrett's vote in Cook, where, based only on oral argument, they seemed inclined to vote the other way.
I am still working through all the final opinions. This year, I am trying to read not only the opinions themselves, but also some of the most relevant precedents. For example, with Slaughter, I also read Myers, Humphrey's Executor, Morrison v. Olson, and Seila Law, trying to understand the issue properly and decide what I actually think about it.
One broader conclusion I have reached from that is that the quality of judicial writing has improved enormously over time. The current Justices' opinions are much easier to read than many older ones. I also appreciate that most of them try to make their reasoning accessible, so that an educated non-specialist can understand what they are saying. As I said last year, I particularly enjoy the writing of Justices Kagan, Gorsuch, and Barrett. For that reason, I was a little sad that Justice Kagan did not write the dissent in Slaughter. With all respect to Justice Sotomayor, Kagan's dissent in Seila Law made a much stronger — and more fun to read — case against the unitary executive.
More generally, accessible judicial writing is one of the great strengths of the American legal system. Back home in Russia, judicial opinions are often close to unreadable, which makes it difficult for a bystander to follow the reasoning behind decisions (if such a reasoning exists at all). In most SCOTUS cases, by contrast, even if I have a strong view about the question or the outcome, I can usually understand why other Justices took a different path. I also greatly enjoy the Divided Argument podcast, which puts many of these debates in context and gives them useful perspective.
That said, it was disappointing to see so many cases divided along ideological lines. Those are the easiest to predict, but I generally find cases that do not split the Justices in the expected way more interesting, because they reveal more about each Justice's individual approach. When they do not simply vote with "their side," they show their own methods, instincts, and willingness to think outside the usual boxes. In many ideologically divided cases, by contrast, it can feel as though neither side is really questioning its own premises.
I hope next term brings fewer of those cases. In the meantime, I am looking forward to reading the remaining opinions over the next few weeks — and then, of course, to the start of the next term.
From Rowley v. Finstad, decided Friday by Judge Eric Tostrud (D. Minn.); I think this is correct—if people disapprove of such military aid, or what Israel is doing with it, their remedy is through the political process, not by trying to get a federal court to stop such aid:
In April 2024, the United States Congress passed a bill providing military aid to Israel. Plaintiffs are Minnesota residents and federal taxpayers who object to the legislation because they believe the funds support genocide in Gaza. They sue members of Congress from Minnesota and the former and current Secretaries of Defense seeking a declaration that the challenged law violates the Constitution, international treaties, and other federal law. They also seek an order enjoining the law's enforcement….. Because Plaintiffs have not plausibly alleged that they are directly injured by Defendants' conduct, they do not have standing to sue …
The Complaint raises two causes of action under the Constitution…. [One], brought against the Congressional Defendants, arises under the Taxing and Spending Clause and the Ninth Amendment … ("The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."). [Another is asserted] against the Defense Secretary Defendants, citing the previous constitutional provisions as well as Article VI of the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act…. They seek a declaratory judgment that the Act violates the U.S. Constitution, customary international law, and federal common and statutory law, and they request an injunction preventing Secretary Hegseth and any successor Defense Secretary from enforcing the Act….
From the California State Bar's Practical Guidance for the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence in the Practice of Law
From Friday's decision in Del Biaggio v. Bansen, written by California Court of Appeal Justice Jeremy Goldman, joined by Justice Tracie Brown and Marin County Superior Court Judge Andrew Sweet:
Del Biaggio's opening brief does contain fictitious quotations, and not on tangential points…. In a declaration in support of his opposition to the motion, Floyd [Del Biaggio's lawyer] states that his office "uses generative AI" in a manner "consistent with State Bar guidance," with "protocols requiring human verification of all outputs using primary sources." He attributes the failures here to a "communication error," explaining that he added the quotations at issue during trial recesses in another case, and asked his paralegal to verify them but she understood he had already done so. He writes that he "deeply regret[s] any errors and affirm[s] they were not willful or AI-driven without review." The paralegal writes in her declaration that she verified all sources in a previous draft, but "based on a brief exchange" believed that Floyd had already verified his later additions to the draft.
First, even if the communication error had not occurred, Floyd's protocol would not comply with the State Bar guidance to which he refers. It provides that "a lawyer must review all outputs produced using AI tools for accuracy, including but not limited to analysis and citations to authority before submission to the court." (State Bar of California, Standing Committee on Professional Responsibility and Conduct, "Practical Guidance for the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence in the Practice of Law" (Practical Guidance), p. 9, italics added.)
We glean from Floyd's declaration that he used generative AI to make additions to the opening brief during trial recesses in another case without ever planning to review personally—or even to have any other lawyer review—the case law he added. Rather, he intended to have his paralegal simply check the citations before filing the brief. This plan would have been inappropriate even if it had not gone awry. (See Noland v. Land of the Free, L.P. (Cal. App. 2025) ["it is a fundamental duty of attorneys to read the legal authorities they cite in appellate briefs or any other court filings to determine that the authorities stand for the propositions for which they are cited"].)
The obvious answer is no. Title IX's application to college soccer is essentially irrelevant to the talent pipeline for the men's international team. And it is also increasingly irrelevant for the women's team. Professional training now produces America's elite international athletes.
In the wake of the World Cup soccer defeat of the U.S. Men's National Team (USMNT), analysts have been wondering what the U.S. can do better to improve its talent in international competitions. In the 4-1 defeat to Belgium, it seemed apparent that other countries (often European countries) have done a better job of developing a talent pipeline for men's soccer than the U.S. Why hasn't the U.S. developed better men's talent?
But on Friday, Scott Yenor of the Heritage Foundation tried to add a new suspect to the list. He offered his view that America's Title IX regime was "a factor behind the underperformance of U.S. men's soccer on the international stage." I'm not sure whether his article was intended mainly to provoke. But the article is so disassociated from the current realities surrounding soccer talent development that a brief response may be warranted.
As Yenor tells the tale, Title IX's prohibition of sex-based discrimination in college sports programs has created "perverse incentives." According to Yenor, Title IX forces universities with (American) football teams to balance things out by padding the rosters of their women's teams in other sports—and, in some cases, cutting men's soccer teams. Yenor displays statistics showing that soccer participation by sex in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I programs has changed over time, so that women now outnumber men.
According to Yenor, these statistics show that, while "America's women's soccer has a world-class pipeline … Title IX prevents men's soccer from building one." Yenor provocatively concludes that "[o]nly when America drops its sports sex-quota system will the American men stop being humiliated by Belgium."
In my view, Yenor's argument betrays a lack of any clear understanding of how talent pipelines of men in international soccer work. Because he does not seriously engage with the real debate over how to improve the USMNT, his policy recommendation misses the mark.
Starting with his graph, his timeline shows little connection to the World Cup performances by America's men's (and women's) national teams. Title IX became effective in the mid-1970s. The men's team did not qualify to participate in any World Cups for many years both before and after. Focusing on the modern era, the U.S. men did not qualify to play between 1954 and 1986. The U.S. men did qualify in 1990—more than a decade after Title IX went into effect—and reached the Round of 16 at the next opportunity, in 1994. In 2002, the USMNT reached the quarterfinals. In its last four appearances—in 2010, 2014, 2022, and 2026—the men played consistently, reached the Round of 16 each time … but progressed no further.
To be sure, Title IX's enactment no doubt helped propel the U.S. women to success. They won the first women's World Cup in 1991. They were also champions in 1999, 2015, and 2019. But in its most recent appearance, in 2023, the U.S. Women's National Team (USWNT) disappointingly only reached the Round of 16. This trendline—consistent, long-standing success followed by a sharp drop in the most recent tournament—bears little relation to the escalating college participation over decades by women that Yenor depicts.
The core problem with Yenor's argument is its focus on the very backend of the talent pipeline—players entering college soccer programs. Read More
A nice line from Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho in his dissent from denial of rehearing en banc Thursday in Lopez v. Ramirez:
I'm grateful to Judge Smith [who wrote the principal dissent from denial of rehearing] for flagging this case for our attention, and share his dismay that the court is denying rehearing en banc. The mediation order should have been sufficient to establish appellate jurisdiction over this interlocutory appeal from the denial of qualified immunity….
A final point: In footnote 6 of his dissent, Judge Smith notes that the [panel opinion, which he is arguing should be reheard -EV] found support in our court's "equally errant" unpublished decision in De Leon v. Munoz, 2025 WL 957500 (5th Cir.).
I joined that unpublished decision. That decision, to be clear, found appellate jurisdiction in De Leon—the same result that both Judge Smith and I urge here. That said, footnote 2 of the per curiam decision separately suggests that there was no appellate jurisdiction at an earlier stage in the case.
When parties seek an extraordinary remedy, they must make an extraordinary showing. After expedited briefing and a hearing yesterday, the Court finds that Plaintiff World Professional Association for Transgender Health has not made that showing in its request for a Temporary Restraining Order to block the Federal Trade Commission's enforcement action in a different forum. It therefore will deny WPATH's Motion for Temporary Restraining Order.
To obtain a TRO under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(b), a movant must show that (1) it "is likely to succeed on the merits"; (2) it "is likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief"; (3) "the balance of equities tips in [the movant's] favor"; and (4) such order "is in the public interest."
Earlier this year, WPATH sued the FTC in this Court alleging that the Commission's investigative efforts violated its First Amendment rights. In that challenge, this Court in May partially granted WPATH's Motion for a Preliminary Injunction halting the "implement[ation] or enforc[ement of]" the "issued CID [Civil Investigative Demand]" that the FTC had served on WPATH seeking a broad range of internal records. The Court held that WPATH had shown that it was likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that the FTC issued the CID in retaliation for WPATH's constitutionally protected speech and that Plaintiff faced irreparable harm without preliminary relief. The Court declined, however, to grant WPATH broader relief, confining its holding to the facts that gave rise to the specific CID before it.
The FTC and several states then brought a separate enforcement action against WPATH in the Northern District of Texas. They allege that WPATH violated the FTC Act's prohibitions on unfair or deceptive trade practices and false advertising. WPATH returned to this Court and sought a TRO enjoining the FTC from pursuing its Texas litigation. Plaintiff contends that the FTC's suit concerns the exact same subject matter as its previously filed pre-enforcement challenge in this Court and would frustrate the pre-existing preliminary injunction. It asserts that the FTC should proceed in this Court, not the Northern District of Texas, and it seeks an anti-suit injunction to that effect.
On October 8, 2025, Plaintiff Elena Sassower …, proceeding pro se, along with the Center for Judicial Accountability, Inc. … brought this Action, alleging the 34 Defendant media outlets and journalism-related entities … conspired to commit "journalistic fraud," "institutional reckless disregard for truth," and "defraud[ed] purchasers, contributors, [and] taxpayers" in violation of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
No, said the court; an excerpt:
[CJA] claims Defendants' "violation of First Amendment responsibilities and journalistic codes by the press, including most of the [D]efendants herein, has meant that all of [CJA]'s hard, painstaking work, spanning more than three decades, has brought no corruption-eradicating changes[ ] when even a modicum of press adherence to such responsibilities and codes … could have brought sweeping[,] corruption-eradicating changes," but this alleged injury is too remote and speculative to constitute an injury in fact….
CJA also claims that "[t]he near total press suppression of any report of [its] work, other than in minimizing, deprecating terms, deprived it of any public profile and appreciation [ ] and all the benefits flowing therefrom[,]" but "the constitutional right of free speech has never been thought to embrace a right to require a journalist or any other citizen to listen to a person's views, let alone a right to require a publisher to publish those views in his newspaper." Accordingly, because CJA has no legally cognizable right to favorable press coverage of its work, it cannot assert an injury-in-fact on this basis….
This essay … seeks to document the pivotal role of Emergency! in producing an array of legal changes that resulted in an explosion in the availability of paramedic services during the time that the TV show aired new episodes….
The legalization of paramedic services required major changes in legal principles relating to both criminal and civil liability. For example, laws in all states made it a crime for non-physicians to practice medicine without a license. These laws rendered paramedic services unfeasible due to the fact that many of the medical functions that paramedics could have performed constituted the practice of medicine. Paramedics could be criminally prosecuted under these laws even if they had undergone training and could demonstrate expertise in carrying out their paramedic tasks.
Civil liability rules also posed significant challenges for the development of paramedic services. Paramedics could be ordered to pay damages for any harms that patients incurred due to paramedic negligence. A showing of negligence was not a significant hurdle for plaintiffs to overcome since, in most jurisdictions, performing illegal medical procedures constituted negligence per se. Even apart from the negligence per se reasoning, paramedics were likely to be held to the same standard of care as physicians.
The Senate Report on the Emergency Medical Services Systems Act of 1973 summarized the legal challenges facing the development of paramedic services. The report stated that "[t]he reported bill directs the Secretary to conduct a study of the legal barriers to the effective delivery of medical care under emergency conditions …. The provision of emergency medical services is affected in some states by inflexible laws on licensure, malpractice and liability."
Adding to the need for legal changes that would have to occur if paramedic services were to develop and expand was the opposition demonstrated by many physician and nurse groups to the paramedic concept. For example, two researchers writing in 1969 surveyed over 1,300 Wisconsin physicians. The researchers asked the physicians whether they would be willing to permit paramedics to perform duties closely related to their medical specialties. The majority of physicians responded in the negative.
