Weekly Circuit Digest: A Nonexhaustive Review of Federal Courts of Appeal Rulings

Please enjoy the newest installment of Short Circuit, a weekly feature produced by a team at the Institute for Justice.

“Technology may render surveillance more convenient, but it does not diminish the importance of the Fourth Amendment’s protections.” That was IJ legislative counsel Alasdair Whitney’s message this week during a congressional hearing on Flock and other automated license plate readers. Read coverage at The Hill, and then take a look at our model legislation on the topic.

Fresh on the Short Circuit podcast: we invite Robert Steinbuch, a professor from the University of Arkansas, to share a poignant critique about the upside-down logic of federal remedies.

After Anthropic declined to loosen contractual limits on using Claude for lethal autonomous warfare or domestic surveillance, the DoD labeled it a supply-chain risk and forbade any of its contractors from using the model. D.C. Circuit: acceptable. Dissent: not what Congress intended.
In 2015, when a Somerville, Massachusetts detective asked an informant to assist in locating a burglary suspect, the informant, irritated by a personal grudge, threatened to harm the suspect—and then did so with a machete. The city sought to dismiss the detective for dishonesty about his role. An arbitrator refused. (The city’s appeal remains pending.) The detective, in a separate suit, claimed that other officers had committed worse acts and were not fired; the city was retaliating against him. A jury awarded about $800,000. The First Circuit later scaled that to roughly $300,000. (Some media reports.)
Some portion of a district court’s ruling against DHS gets overshadowed by questions of Article III standing in this First Circuit decision. Yet the standards for proper notice regarding third-country removals of noncitizens still apply. Notably, footnote 2 employs the term “refoulment” (in the context of “chain refoulement”), which means compelling a refugee or asylum seeker to return to a place where they would likely face persecution. Originating in French, the term did not appear in the original OED and, unlike many Law French terms, seems to have entered English (alongside human rights law) only after World War II.
Maryland appeals court (2016): Baltimore police violated the Fourth Amendment by using a cell-site simulator to locate a shooting suspect without a warrant. Suppress the evidence. The Fourth Circuit (2026): The practice was unconstitutional, and there are concerns about law enforcement leaning on private nondisclosure agreements as a pretext to hide or obscure important information when seeking a search warrant. However, qualified immunity, state-law “public official” immunity, and municipal immunity doom the damages claims for the nearly two years spent in pretrial detention.
There is little doubt that officers cannot pull someone over without reasonable suspicion and then conjure up a bogus justification after the fact, declares the Fifth Circuit (per curiam, unpublished). Thus the Alexandria, Louisiana case—where officers claimed the driver failed to signal despite dashcam footage showing otherwise and then prolonged the stop unlawfully—will move beyond the pleading stage after almost four years and more than 200 docket entries. No qualified immunity here. (This case originates from IJ.)
With many other gun laws not faring well in court, it is notable that the ban on interstate gun sales (save for licensed professionals in the trade) had endured—at least until now, in the Fifth Circuit. If you’re scanning quickly, we suggest jumping to page 11, which catalogs a slew of archaic gun statutes, including one tied to “Bacon’s Rebellion.”
Sixth Circuit (in dissent): A Tennessee statute prohibiting the sharing of truthful information with minors about obtaining abortions out of state constitutes a content-based restriction on speech, and the state did not even attempt to argue it passes strict scrutiny. Enforcement enjoined.
Indiana man receives a life sentence for gun and drug offenses, but the punishment was enhanced after investigators uncovered threatening text messages found through a warrantless forensic inspection of his phone. Seventh Circuit (unpublished): Qualified immunity. It remains unsettled whether telling an officer there is a warrant, when none exists, renders the search unconstitutional.
Credit goes to the advocate who argued before the Ninth Circuit that decades of using a stolen identity should be treated as “adverse possession” rather than identity theft. The decision aligns with expectations, yet the unconventional argument deserves credit for pushing boundaries.
Idaho began addressing water rights in the Snake River Basin four decades ago. State courts issued rulings on more than 158,600 water rights over the following 27 years, involving private landowners, the U.S. government, and ranchers who graze cattle on federal lands. In 2017, three years after the last decree, Idaho revised its stockwater rights laws (the right to use water for livestock), shifting from procedures that could declare rights forfeited to limiting federal acquisition of such rights. After navigating a procedural thicket, the Ninth Circuit concluded the revised laws violate the Supremacy Clause.
Like many states, Hawai’i requires a permit before purchasing a firearm. Unlike others, Hawai’i’s permits expire after 30 days, and buyers must bring some of their firearms to a police station for inspection. Is this a Second Amendment violation? The Ninth Circuit (en banc) says no. A footnote in Bruen provides a safe harbor for this kind of rule. Dissent (VanDyke, J.): “[I]f our court’s takeaway from Bruen is that Bruen altered the law to make it harder to mount a successful Second Amendment challenge, then somebody has seriously lost the plot.”
The Supreme Court has stated that an asylum applicant who is apprehended merely within “25 yards” of the border falls near the “threshold of initial entry” and does not gain constitutional due-process protections. ICE: And by “25 yards,” the Court meant anywhere in the country. The Ninth Circuit: Not so.
“For much of the 150-plus-year history of school yearbooks,” the Ninth Circuit observes, “embarrassing photos and cringeworthy anecdotes lived in obscurity in basements and closets across the country.” In today’s digital era, Classmates.com hosts hundreds of thousands of yearbooks online. The Ninth Circuit holds that a district court properly certified classes seeking monetary and injunctive relief against the site operator under California’s right-of-publicity statute.
During a cross-country flight, an Egyptian immigrant repeatedly leaves his seat, visits multiple restrooms, fixes his gaze on other passengers, and takes a photo of flight attendants. A crew member asks him to stay seated; he yells, and a federal officer intervenes. The jury awards him $7.2 million for physical and emotional injuries. The district court vacated the award, and the Ninth Circuit agrees that airlines enjoy immunity for reporting suspicious behavior—this immunity even extends to what happens after the report. Dissent (Higginson, J.): The jury did not find him suspicious.
In 2019, a family sues a property manager and others in state court over a mold problem in their Coronado, California military housing. The Ninth Circuit (2025): this belongs in state court. The Supreme Court: GVR (likely to be reconsidered). The Ninth Circuit (this week): It belongs in state court.
An Alabama man with terminal brain cancer, a scarred, shaved head with staples, shirtless and bloodied from allegedly smashing an ambulance’s windshield, disobeys orders to stop approaching officers and then assaults an officer, who fatally shoots him. The Eleventh Circuit: And here are 87 pages explaining why that does not violate the Fourth Amendment, countering arguments from the man’s estate’s counsel that were not well received.

“The Court is simply not inclined to accept the Government’s assurances at face value.” This week, a federal judge in Alabama issued a stay blocking federal enforcement of three policies that appear unconstitutional to the court: warrantless raids on construction sites, detention of (non-white) workers at those sites without individualized suspicion, and disregard for evidence that detainees are U.S. citizens, such as DHS-certified REAL IDs. “For the first time in a long while, I can go to work without fearing I’ll be arrested without cause,” said IJ client Leo Venegas. Click here to learn more.