Short Circuit: A Digest of the Latest Federal Court Decisions

Enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature assembled by a team at the Institute for Justice.

In the new Short Circuit podcast, we examine a century of zoning and the prospects for reform in courts and city councils, with Harvard’s Molly Brady and Cambridge, Massachusetts’ Vice Mayor Burhan Azeem.

On the newest Law Office History podcast, Christian Burset of Penn Law chats about how being a textualist in Old England was tricky, since Parliament’s statutes weren’t always clear and finding copies of them was a challenge.

1. Admittedly, some observers might fixate on the clash between parental rights in schools and a vaccine mandate of broad application in this First Circuit ruling. (Despite the latest SCOTUS rulings, no preliminary injunction will issue.) Yet our headline takeaway is that the First Circuit penned its opinion in single-spaced Times New Roman. A modest start, to be sure.
2. A political group seeks a preliminary injunction ahead of New York City’s mayoral race, arguing that it intends to run ads but that certain disclosure requirements tied to those ads are unconstitutional. The district court denied the motion, and the group appealed. The Second Circuit observed that the election occurred in 2025, rendering the matter moot since there’s no comment about the next election. The dissent: in fact, they did address the underlying complaint, and the disclosure regime remains unconstitutional.
3. With the Chevron doctrine eroded, the Administrative State keeps shrinking. This time the Fourth Circuit weighs in on the deportation case of a Dominican woman employed by an elder-care provider who may have checked the wrong box on an employment form.
4. A district court, sua sponte, remands a removed case because the notice failed to establish the plaintiffs’ citizenship. Can the remand order be appealed? The Fifth Circuit says it depends on whether the defect is jurisdictional or procedural. If jurisdictional, it cannot be appealed—period. If procedural and raised by a party, it cannot be appealed either. Since this defect was raised sua sponte, the judge acted outside the statute, and that remand may be appealed.
5. A man from Ethiopia, slated for removal to any country other than Ethiopia, files a habeas petition six months after an immigration court finds him removable. When the government attempts to fly him to Cameroon (as it had indicated months earlier), he files emergency motions to halt the deportation. The district court denies the motions, but while the appeal is pending, grants his habeas petition and orders his release into the United States. The Fifth Circuit (per curiam) dismisses the appeal as moot. Judge Oldham is not happy with the handling, calling the dismissal a “travesty” of “gamesmanship,” an “avalanche of self-contradicting gibberish,” and a “magistrate judge’s surprise switcheroo.”
6. A devotee of tabletop role-playing games designs a game intended to assist people dealing with anxiety and other psychological challenges. He signs a licensing agreement with a company that promotes “geek therapy”—therapeutic methods built around geek culture. When tensions arise, the designer sues the company. The district court dismisses all of his claims. Will he succeed on appeal? The Fifth Circuit says: Natural 1.
7. Indiana public employees can have union dues deducted from their wages. Since 2021, teachers must take extra steps, including signing a form stating, “I am aware that I have a First Amendment right . . . to refrain from joining and paying dues to a union.” A district court held this compelled speech in violation of the First Amendment. Indiana revised the form to say, “The State of Indiana wishes to make you aware . . .” The Seventh Circuit: The rewrite cures the compelled-speech issue, but making teachers jump through extra hoops constitutes viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment. Affirmed.
8. A Missouri man convicted of being a felon in possession raises questions about his Fifth Amendment rights after existing Eighth Circuit precedent blocks his Second Amendment claims. The court notes that he was convicted for selling crack, a felony in all 50 states, undermining any claim that state differences could spare him from disarmament.
9. An Idaho physician challenges the state abortion ban as applied to circumstances where an abortion is necessary to prevent serious, lasting harm (but not life-threatening harm) to a pregnant patient. The district court grants an injunction and Idaho seeks a stay pending appeal. The Ninth Circuit grants the stay. In a concurring view, some say, “Really?” Dobbs resolved this matter. A dissent argues Roe recognized two abortion rights—one privacy-based and one health-based—with Dobbs rejecting only the former; history and tradition, the dissent contends, support the latter.
10. Boise State student and transgender athlete Lindsay Hecox challenged Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. When the Supreme Court accepted her case, she claimed she had no interest in playing college sports subject to the law and suggested mootness. The Court disagreed, noting she remained enrolled, upheld the law, and remanded to the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit later stated that she has withdrawn from the school, so the case is moot, despite her stated desire to re-enroll.
11. Facebook uses terms-of-service violations to terminate a creator’s decade-long account with 25 million followers. The creator argues that Facebook breached the contract by deleting the account, while Facebook maintains that even if a contract exists, it cannot infringe on the platform’s publishing discretion due to Section 230.
12. Football fans secured a multi-billion-dollar jury verdict against the NFL, contending that anticompetitive deals caused inflated prices for Sunday Ticket. The district court rejected the verdict, excluding the fans’ expert as unreliable and granting judgment as a matter of law for the NFL. The Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that expert opinions are not automatically unreliable simply because they are impeachable. (Asides aside, the summarist’s favorite team is the Denver Broncos.)
13. In Bivens news, only three categories of plaintiffs can prevail. The terrorist Abu Hamza, complaining about the conditions of his life imprisonment, is not one of them. Therefore, he cannot succeed under Bivens. The Tenth Circuit agrees.
14. One might be drawn to this Eleventh Circuit ruling because a Cash App reference leads to ideas of “Scooby Snacks,” but the real takeaway concerns the drug-dealer defendant’s unsuccessful attempts to obtain a Franks hearing to exclude hearsay.
15. In en banc developments, the Fourth Circuit declines to review its decision upholding a preliminary injunction that allows former CIA employees who worked in DEI-related roles to pursue internal employment appeals.
16. Additionally in en banc news, the Fifth Circuit will not immediately re-hear a case about Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause to ban machine guns. The vote was tight, 9–8.
17. Further en banc action: the Fifth Circuit will revisit its ruling that Trader Joe’s committed an unfair labor practice for terminating an employee described by the dissent as “the kind of worker HR managers fear.”
18. And in a surprisingly eventful en banc moment, the Ninth Circuit granted a stay of a district court’s TRO against the federal government regarding its demand that California and Washington segregate certain ballots. The same day, the court moved to hear the case en banc. The next day, the eleven-judge en banc panel reinstated the initial stay. Plaintiffs then petitioned for a full court rehearing en banc, seeking the participation of all 29 active circuit judges plus the senior judge from the initial panel. The Ninth Circuit’s retort: Full en banc? We Never Go Full En Banc.

Protectionism alert! This week, IJ sent a letter to officials in Clewiston, Florida, warning that the city’s food-truck ordinance violates the Florida Constitution. In Clewiston, food trucks may operate only on Mondays and Tuesdays and must stay at least 200 feet away from any open restaurant unless that restaurant consents in writing. Those two days aren’t accidental—most brick-and-mortar restaurants in Clewiston are closed then, effectively permitting food trucks only when competition from existing businesses is unlikely. The 200-foot buffer serves a similar protectionist function, giving current restaurants a veto over whether a nearby competitor can set up shop.