Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature written by a bunch of people at the Institute for Justice.
New cert petition! In 2022, a SWAT team blew up IJ client Carlos Pena’s print shop in Los Angeles while trying to apprehend a fugitive—and the city stuck Carlos with the tab. But the Fifth Amendment requires just compensation when the gov’t intentionally damages or destroys an innocent person’s property, so we’re asking the Supreme Court to take up the case and remind lower courts that that’s been the law for a long time. (Click here for a lovingly crafted podcast on the history.)
This week on the Short Circuit podcast: We dive into the Byzantine flowchart that is civil forfeiture, as detailed in IJ’s new report Policing for Profit 4.
- Third Circuit (over a dissent): It’s only an events contract if it’s regulated in the CFTC region of D.C.; otherwise it’s just sparkling sports gambling.
- It’s not George Costanza but rather the Fourth Circuit reminding us: “We live in a society.” And here that means having to follow West Virginia’s compulsory schoolchildren vaccination law, even though it lacks religious exemptions. Dissent: Seems like the Free Exercise Clause should require a religious exemption for a student in a virtual public school when the state exempts homeschoolers.
- Fourth Circuit (unpublished): Forcing an elderly widow to choose between agreeing to waive all of her claims against a city whose sewer system just flooded her home and being homeless for want of funds (on account of the aforementioned sewage) just might maybe be “undue influence” that voids the contract. To a jury with you! Dissent: A contract where one party had more bargaining power than the other isn’t “undue influence.” It’s just a contract.
- College football players sue the NCAA so they can hit the gridiron for the 2025-26 season. Under the NCAA’s “JUCO” rule, their time playing in junior college ate up their eligibility to play at traditional four-year schools. They argue it’s an antitrust violation, win a P.I. (that also holds for 2026-27), and live out their glory between the goal lines. Fourth Circuit: Offsides because the district court used the “twinkling of an eye” analysis, not the full “rule of reason” one. Remand for a do-over.
- Texas law refuses to recognize non-religious wedding officiants (except for judges), which may or may not violate the constitutional rights of nonbelievers who wish to perform marriage ceremonies. But the Fifth Circuit (unpublished) doesn’t need to figure that out right now because this particular plaintiff, a would-be secular celebrant, hasn’t identified anyone in particular he’d like to marry.
- Feds seek to revoke man’s supervised release after he attempted to cash a phony check. A magistrate holds a hearing and recommends he be sent back to prison for three years, a conclusion the district court judge adopts without a second hearing. Seventh Circuit (unpublished): Though unusual to not have another hearing, it’s fine. Dissent: Weird to take a firm stand on a thorny issue of first impression and create a circuit split in a non-precedential order.
- In 2023, Iowa banned public-school instruction about gender identity or sexual orientation through sixth grade, and it required notifying parents of a student’s gender transition. Eighth Circuit: At least on its face, the law is a permissible exercise of state discretion to set public-school curricula, and it isn’t unconstitutionally vague.
- In 2023, Iowa also required public-school libraries to remove books containing “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act.” Eighth Circuit: That’s a permissible exercise of the state’s broad discretion to decide what books go in school libraries. (Ed.: Does this mean so long to Greek myths, the Bible, and Shakespeare?)
- During 2020 civil unrest, Minneapolis police officer fires non-lethal projectile into crowd of protesters, some of them unruly, from roof of police station. It strikes plaintiff, who was ruly and who was across the street filming on his phone, in the head. Eighth Circuit: Once again, cops can shoot people in these circumstances as long as they don’t intend to arrest them.
- California dialysis centers would rather be paid by private insurers than by Medicaid, because Medicaid might not even cover their costs. So they fund a nonprofit that provides insurance-premium assistance to dialysis patients (whom, under the ACA, insurers cannot refuse to enroll). California responds by passing a law that caps the rate at which providers who donate to charities can be reimbursed. Ninth Circuit: But donating to charity is protected by the First Amendment, so that’s not going to work.
- Immigration judge denies man asylum in November 2015, which he contends contained a series of due-process-denying procedural mistakes. Ninth Circuit: You should’ve raised these issues to the board of immigration appeals—saying only that the decision was “wrongfully made” isn’t enough—so we’ll pass on the issue. Concurrence (authored by the opinion’s author): How is this man still in the U.S. pursuing a meritless claim a decade later? It is “an open secret that our court introduces massive and debilitating delays into immigration enforcement. Perversely, those very delays—which our court guarantees to every immigration petitioner who asks for one—have become the primary object of thousands of meritless immigration petitions each year.”
- Tenth Circuit: In this case about a Chaffee County, Colo. man accused of murdering his wife, the district court said that, if what is alleged is true, investigators and prosecutors really crossed the line by withholding reams of compelling exculpatory evidence. But if you want to know about any of that you’ll have to go find the district court opinion. In our 41-page opinion, we’ve only got room for a detailed account of the inculpatory evidence. [Ed.: Meanwhile, here’s a DA getting disbarred over her actions in the case (and others).]
- Nobody on staff here at Short Circuit is an employment lawyer, but we suspect that having your human-resources manager make a PowerPoint presentation indicating that “Ideal Sales Candidates” would be “American and Caucasian (preferred) ethnicity” is what experts in the field would call “pretty bad.” Anyway, this Eleventh Circuit case (which throws in some misconduct by the plaintiff’s trial counsel as well as like half a dozen facts just as bad as the PowerPoint thing) turns out how you’d probably expect.
- U.S. Marshals raid an Atlanta house to execute arrest warrants on a man, and a firefight ensues. He dies after being shot 59 times, including after he was down on the ground. Georgia indicts the officers, who, as federal agents, invoke federal law to remove the case to federal court. The state seeks a “limited remand” to send the case back to state court to file a superseding indictment. The district court declines. Eleventh Circuit: This is an interlocutory appeal that we lack jurisdiction over. (On the civil side of things, the man’s mother filed a Bivens suit against the officers for excessive force. Though her claims survived qualified immunity in 2022, they ultimately failed in 2024.)
- And in en banc news, the Fourth Circuit will not rehear an earlier panel opinion holding that a district judge’s oral pronouncement of a criminal sentence controls over the written judgment. Eight judges write to explain how, even though this practice is wrongheaded and has led to a flood of litigation challenging long-settled sentences, they’re not going to grant en banc review in this case for . . . reasons.
- And in more en banc news, the Fifth Circuit will not reconsider its decision that non-citizens who were never lawfully admitted to the country are subject to mandatory detention pending their removal proceedings, with no opportunity for being released on bond.
- And in further en banc news, the Ninth Circuit will reconsider its decision allowing a California inmate’s suit against some guards to proceed after he pled “no contest” to criminal charges over the same incident.
New cert petition! In 2022, a SWAT team blew up IJ client Amy Hadley’s house in South Bend, Ind. while trying to apprehend a fugitive (who wasn’t there)—and the city stuck Amy with the tab. But the Fifth Amendment requires just compensation when the gov’t intentionally damages or destroys an innocent person’s property, so we’re asking the Supreme Court to take up the case and remind lower courts that that’s been the law for a long time. (Click here for a lovingly crafted podcast on the history.)
The post Short Circuit: An inexhaustive weekly compendium of rulings from the federal courts of appeal appeared first on Reason.com.
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