Insights

In Trump v. CASA, the Supreme Court significantly constrained the equitable authority of federal district courts to grant universal or nationwide injunctive relief, clarifying that, with specific exceptions, a federal court’s power to grant relief is limited to the parties before it. When it was issued, many bemoaned CASA’s implications for preventing government overreach.

In October 2025, the Second Circuit addressed a recurring procedural issue: the standard of review district judges must apply to objections to magistrate judge reports and recommendations (“R&Rs”) on dispositive motions. In Nambiar v. The Central Orthopedic Group, LLP, the Second Circuit clarified that district judges are required to conduct a de novo review of any portion of an R&R to which a party has made timely and specific objections—even when those objections restate arguments previously made before the magistrate judge. This decision resolves confusion stemming from district courts that have limited de novo review to "new" arguments, and it sets clear expectations for how parties should challenge R&Rs going forward.

On December 8, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in State of New York v. Trump held unlawful and vacated the U.S. Department of the Interior’s “Wind Order” implementing President Trump’s January 20, 2025, “Temporary Withdrawal of All Areas on the Outer Continental Shelf From Offshore Wind Leasing and Review of the Federal Government’s Leasing and Permitting Practices for Wind Projects,” 90 Fed. Reg. 8363 (Wind Memo, discussed further in a prior alert). This lawsuit, brought by a coalition of states with Alliance for Clean Energy New York intervening on their behalf, challenges Interior’s implementation, through the Wind Order, of the Wind Memo’s direction to pause processing permits and other approvals necessary to onshore and offshore wind energy development. Notably, the lawsuit does not challenge the other element of the Wind Memo, which withdrew unleased offshore areas from future leasing under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA). (Note, even though the Wind Order indicates its effect is temporary, the Wind Memo instructs relevant agencies not to advance wind development projects until a “comprehensive assessment” is completed, and the district court’s order confirms that the affected agencies had no plans to restart permitting activities until that assessment was complete.)

On October 1, 2025, the Eighth Circuit decided 3M Co. v. Commissioner in the taxpayer’s favor, based on its application of Loper Bright. The question presented in the case was whether the IRS had the authority to reallocate royalty income to a U.S. parent company that its foreign subsidiary was prohibited from paying under foreign law. The court held that the best interpretation of the governing statute did not permit the IRS’s reallocation.

Last week, we wrote that concerns about excessive, unchecked executive branch power resulting from the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. CASA—which declared universal/nationwide injunctions likely exceeded district courts’ equitable authority under FRCP 65—felt premature, because there were a number of other levers district courts could pull to deliver the equivalent of nationwide injunctive relief. We discussed how Section 705 of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) is one such lever. That section authorizes courts to “postpone the effective date” of a challenged agency action pending judicial review utilizing the same four-factor test applicable to requests for injunctive relief.

On June 12, 2025, the Fifth Circuit ruled in Guardian Flight I[i] and Guardian Flight II[ii] that the No Surprises Act (“NSA”) does not confer a private right of action on parties to confirm an Independent Dispute Resolution (“IDR”) award in court. The Fifth Circuit is the first United States Court of Appeals to weigh in on the issue, which has divided some district courts. On July 11, 2025 the Fifth Circuit denied Appellant’s request for en banc review of the Court’s finding that the NSA lacks a private right of action.[iii] The panel’s ruling is now final and controlling precedent for the Fifth Circuit unless overturned by the Supreme Court.

On May 29, 2025, the Supreme Court issued its long-awaited decision in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County. In a five-justice majority opinion written by Justice Kavanaugh, the Court held that the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) does not require review of the environmental impacts of “upstream” or “downstream” related projects, and reiterated: “The bedrock principle of judicial review in NEPA cases can be stated in a word: Deference.”[1] This decision comes as the federal government works to expedite what over the years have become lengthy NEPA review processes, and not long after the White House Council on Environmental Quality rescinded its NEPA regulations.

Following a directive from President Trump,[1] and in the wake of two court decisions concluding the Council on Environmental Quality (“CEQ”) had no authority to promulgate them in the first place, CEQ’s National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) regulations are being removed from the Code of Federal Regulations.

On February 18, President Trump issued an Executive Order titled “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies” that directs independent agencies (as well as Cabinet Departments and their sub-agencies) to route all “proposed and final significant regulatory” and budgetary actions through the White House and the Office of Management and Budget. If implemented to its full extent, this action will significantly strengthen the authority of the White House by weakening the political autonomy of these independent agencies. As an assertion of the President’s inherent powers under Article II of the U.S. Constitution, it also stands to weaken congressional influence over these independent agencies, both through the appropriations and confirmation processes.

As we discussed in our recent client alert, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas issued an opinion and order on December 3, 2024, ("the Order") enjoining the federal government from enforcing the CTA and a rule implementing it. The rule requires certain entities formed or registered to do business in the U.S. ("reporting companies") to report information about themselves and their beneficial owners to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network ("FinCEN"), a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

On December 3, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas issued an opinion and order (the Order) enjoining the federal government, including the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), from enforcing the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) and a FinCEN rule implementing the CTA, codified at 31 C.F.R. § 1010.380) (i.e., the Reporting Rule).  The Reporting Rule requires certain entities formed or registered to do business in the U.S. (reporting companies) to report information about themselves, including personal identifiers for their natural-person “beneficial owners.”  For background on the CTA and the Reporting Rule, please see our previous client alert discussing a separate district court’s decision (National Small Business United v. Yellen, No. 5:22-cv-01448 (N.D. Ala. Mar. 1, 2024) (NSBU) ruling the CTA unconstitutional.) 

On November 22, 2024, the Federal Circuit granted the United States’ petition for panel rehearing en banc of its June 2024 decision in Percipient.ai, Inc. v. United States (litigation we have extensively discussed here, here, and here).  In its June decision, the Circuit held Percipient had standing to challenge a National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) procurement action—whether NGA had complied with the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act’s (FASA) commercial-item mandate at 10 U.S.C. § 3453—nested within the performance of a previously awarded NGA task order upon which Percipient had not bid.

On Friday, June 28, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council (“Chevron”)[1] in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (No. 22-451) and Relentless v. Dep’t of Commerce (No. 22–1219)[2] (the two cases collectively referred to as “Loper Bright”), bringing an official end to the decades-old and eponymously named “Chevron deference” doctrine. Not content to stop there, the Court returned fresh to work Monday, July 1, to, in Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (No. 22-451)[3] (“Corner Post”), effectively extend the limitations period to challenge final agency actions under the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”).

There are very few issues that can unite Republican and Democratic State Attorneys General in today’s polarized political environment. Aviation is one of those issues.

The Supreme Court has shown great interest in personal jurisdiction issues of late. Last term, in Mallory, the Court upheld a state corporate registration law that requires companies to consent to personal jurisdiction as a condition to conducting business in the state.[1] In 2021, in Ford, the Court held that it is not a violation of due process for a state to assert personal jurisdiction over a defendant even though the defendant’s contacts with the state are not the cause of the plaintiff’s injuries.[2]

On July 21, 2023, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) published in the Federal Register a final rulemaking expanding the scope of workplace injury and illness information that certain employers are required to electronically submit to the agency annually. The rule resuscitates (with slight modification) a prior OSHA regulation from the Obama administration which the Trump administration had withdrawn.

On Friday, April 14, the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in Axon Enterprise, Inc. v. Federal Trade Commission, holding that constitutional challenges to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) can be heard in federal district court in the first instance, without the plaintiffs first having to exhaust those arguments through the agencies’ respective administrative enforcement processes. The Court did not address the underlying constitutional challenges, but the long-awaited decision on the jurisdictional question is likely to encourage more constitutional challenges to those and other agencies’ enforcement schemes being raised and heard first in the federal courts.

The Supreme Court yesterday heard oral arguments in Axon Enterprises v. The Federal Trade Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission v. Cochran, both of which present the question whether parties to administrative enforcement actions can promptly challenge the authority and structure of the agencies in federal district courts, or must await the conclusion of the administrative proceedings to raise their objections in the courts of appeals, as is provided for in the FTC Act, the Securities Exchange Act, and the Administrative Procedures Act. The two cases come at a time when the Supreme Court has been receptive to complaints about administrative agency authority and at least some of the justices appeared ready to clear the way for Axon and Cochran to return to the district courts to pursue their wide-ranging challenges to the authority of the FTC and SEC, respectively. 

Following the Supreme Court’s granting of the emergency motion to stay enforcement of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration’s (“OSHA”) COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard (“ETS”) on January 13, 2022 (which we previously covered here), OSHA announced on January 25, 2022 that it is withdrawing the ETS as an enforceable emergency temporary standard, effective January 26, 2022, and will instead prioritize its resources on finalizing a permanent COVID-19 Healthcare Standard, per OSHA’s statement on its website. OSHA noted that it is not withdrawing the ETS as a proposed rule, which will continue to work its way through the ongoing notice and comment rulemaking process.