Delight in the newest issue of Short Circuit, a weekly feature produced by a team at the Institute for Justice.
New case! In February 2025, federal agents conducted a raid on IJ client Mario Ayala Cruz’s check-cashing and money-transfer business in Glendale, Arizona, seizing computers, cell phones, documents, and more than $450,000 in cash and checks. And then… crickets. Mario, who runs the operation lawfully with his wife and adult children, has heard nothing for twenty months. No charges have been filed, and the feds have long since missed the 60-day window to either begin civil forfeiture or return the property. That’s a violation of the Fourth Amendment and federal law—and it was especially cruel because it forced Mario to cut short his final visit with his ailing father in Mexico. Click here to learn more.
New on the Short Circuit podcast: We celebrate a Rocky Mountain high at the Tenth Circuit Bench & Bar Conference. Learn what drives the circuit from the experts we encountered there, including our first guest from a circuit historical society.
- For decades, federal guidance has kept immigration enforcement away from “sensitive locations,” including houses of worship. Recently, DHS and ICE issued new policy guidance permitting “discretion” and “case by case” decisions regarding enforcement at churches, synagogues, and mosques. Religious organizations sue. D.C. Circuit (over a dissent): And they have standing.
- After spending 7.5 years in pretrial detention at Rikers, a man is finally sentenced to a maximum of seven years—time to release him! Yet prison officials drag their feet for another 17 days. Second Circuit: Case not dismissed. He plausibly alleged that the city and its officials were turning a blind eye to overdetention.
- Sure, says two-thirds of this Third Circuit panel, the plaintiff church has shown considerable evidence that Collier Township, Pennsylvania officials rejected its plan to build a 13,000-square-foot shrine out of hostility to the church’s pro-life advocacy, but that doesn’t automatically grant a preliminary injunction because there’s nothing “preliminary” about erecting a 13,000-square-foot shrine.
- Judge presides over a 1993 Philadelphia murder trial where the prosecutor is… also an eyewitness in a separate personal-injury suit where the judge is the plaintiff. Conflict of interest? Third Circuit (unpublished): Judicial, prosecutorial, and municipal immunity.
- A federal prisoner endures nearly three years in solitary confinement without a hearing and is later cleared of involvement in another inmate’s death. He brings FTCA claims; they’re dismissed; he learns of the dismissal too late to appeal. SCOTUS (2025): We agree with him (and the feds) that he had enough to reopen the case. Fourth Circuit (2026): We agree that his 2017 complaint was timely; he was Heck-barred from filing earlier.
- Looking for a light read this weekend? Try 173 pages from the Fourth Circuit on whether the church autonomy doctrine protects a Catholic social-services agency’s decision to refuse health-insurance coverage for an employee’s same-sex spouse.
- Trial-advocacy tip: If you’re going to “cross[ ] the bounds of proper advocacy,” make sure the court’s list of your misdeeds isn’t longer than four pages. The four-and-a-half-page catalog in this Fifth Circuit opinion is not a good look. (Your humble summarist also recommends using Ctrl-F to search for “skunk.”)
- FBI agent: I accidentally shot a hostage dead in 2018 after he appeared unexpectedly on the other side of a window we were breaching, leaned out, and then grabbed my gun. District court: Lies. The hostage was blindfolded, his hands taped, and he hadn’t a thing to grab. The federal government must pay about $2.3 million for the agent’s intentional torts. Fifth Circuit: Adjust to $1.9 million. Dissent: We should be focused on punishing the hostage-takers (now behind bars), not the agent (who had qualified immunity).
- Mississippi adopts a statute aimed at curbing state-supported DEI programs. The district court issues a TRO, then a corrected TRO, then a PI, finding a likely First Amendment violation. The Fifth Circuit: The merits were wrong and require a do-over. More critically, the initial TRO contained numerous legal and factual “AI hallucinations” (including non-existent defendants); even the corrected (and backdated) TRO contained one, and the PI incorporated that TRO by reference. “Because of the extraordinarily grave errors by the district court, we vacate and remand for assignment to a different district judge.”
- Come for the dramatic retelling of Rebel Without a Cause. Stay for the Bruen analysis that’s more than a mere form of intermediate scrutiny, which leads the Fifth Circuit to conclude that much of the Federal Switchblade Act violates the Second Amendment.
- South Texas nonprofit alleges FEMA maintains secret policies for disaster-relief eligibility and that it’s violating FOIA by not posting them in an online “reading room.” The Fifth Circuit: FOIA empowers district courts to compel online posting in appropriate cases. Remand to determine whether this is such a case.
- Friends, the LSIPA, as enforced by ERCOT’s CEO, keeps GHAE from meddling with Texas. But is the LSIPA preempted by the DPA’s CFIUS, not to mention FIRRMA? Fifth Circuit: Texas may ban certain investments from China, Russia, and others to protect its electric grid.
- Michigan prisoners sue under the Eighth Amendment, alleging their facility is overrun by toxic mold. (When they request permission to use fungicide themselves, the warden allegedly tells them to “just scrub harder.”) Officials: The prisoners didn’t allege “heinous” conduct and didn’t point to cases about these specific mold strains. Sixth Circuit: No, this goes to discovery. No qualified immunity (for most defendants) on these claims.
- A Tennessee inmate with chronic back problems suddenly worsens: he can’t sit, stand, walk, eat, or take a deep breath. His pain is excruciating, and an X‑ray reveals several potential issues. Yet he isn’t sent to the hospital for two weeks, and a treatable staph infection leaves him paralyzed. Deliberate indifference? District court: No. Sixth Circuit: Perhaps. To trial this must go. Dissent: No.
- Federal law authorizes the president to call up a state’s National Guard to quell a rebellion. But even under highly deferential review, the Ninth Circuit (with a dissent) says the Los Angeles protests last year were not a genuine rebellion, and the order to federalize the California National Guard was unconstitutional.
- At 21, an Iranian immigrant is charged with marijuana possession; for more than two decades he remains trouble-free and adheres to every condition to stay in the country. In 2025, after obtaining ICE permission to move from California to Kansas, ICE agents arrest him in his yard in front of his U.S.-citizen wife. The Tenth Circuit holds that his release after eight months does not moot his habeas case because ICE re‑detains people all the time. It also doesn’t stop the district court from ordering the feds not to deport him, and it doesn’t stop us from concluding that the government violated its own rules, infringing due process. Dissent: This is moot.
- It’s a crime to lie on paperwork to buy a gun for someone barred from possessing one. Even rarer is buying a gun for someone who is eligible—because you’re taking advantage of a military discount—yet still committing a crime. Tenth Circuit (unpublished): Still a crime, though.
- With less fanfare than the Allman Brothers, Congress passed the Midnight Rider in 2005, allowing Oklahoma to regulate environmental programs in Indian country with EPA approval. The rider was largely ignored until the Supreme Court found that much of the state sits within Indian country. Reborn, Oklahoma sought and obtained EPA approval in 2025—a move the Pawnee Nation now challenges. Tenth Circuit: The EPA must keep riding; the approval was appropriate.
- One way to cope with our heated, socially media-saturated discourse is to take a moment and focus on big issues. Alternatively, you could follow our lead and dive into this 46-page Eleventh Circuit piece on Florida’s process for deciding which books belong in school libraries, and the ensuing lawsuits about whether school-board members are protected by legislative privilege from having to testify about their motives in removing books deemed too sexual. (By a 2–1 vote, yes, they must testify.)
- A man serves 23 years of a 75-year sentence and is exonerated thanks in part to modern DNA testing. The district court rules he can’t sue a Georgia DNA analyst for perjuring about the original test result, but he can sue the analyst for fabricating evidence outside of court. Eleventh Circuit (unpublished): Reversed; the alleged fabrication was only the testimony, and lying witnesses are absolutely immune from civil liability. (Click here for a thoughtfully produced podcast on common-law witness immunity, which, alas, would not have shielded this analyst.)
- And in en banc news, the Ninth Circuit will not rehear its unpublished decision reaffirming circuit precedent applying a “sliding scale” test for awarding preliminary injunctions. Ten judges dissent from the denial, arguing that the Ninth Circuit’s test conflicts with Supreme Court precedent. Three of those judges separately dissent, arguing the court is too reluctant to recognize when the Supreme Court has disagreed with circuit precedent, and that the Court should set them straight.
New case! IJ client Karli Kemper, a 25-year teaching veteran, operates State 48 Arts and Academics, an inventive microschool in Pinal County, Ariz. that has transformed the lives of students, most of whom have special needs and struggle in conventional settings. Yet the county is threatening to shut it down. Even though private schools are permitted by right in Kemper’s rurally zoned neighborhood, officials insist that means only public and charter schools—private schools not included. That stance is outrageous, as are the many burdensome conditions officials demand, even if they grant her a special-use permit, which they still plan to deny. Click here to learn more.
