A newsletter by Reuters and Westlaw |
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U.S. activists allied with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hope to ban vaccine mandates in as many as a dozen states this year, building on a law they conceived and passed in Idaho. Here’s what to know: |
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The CDC and Kennedy's new vaccine advisory board have since weakened the government's childhood vaccine recommendations, which have traditionally underpinned state school vaccine mandates.
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The Medical Freedom Act Coalition, launched in January, aims to advance that agenda by barring state vaccine mandates they say are government overreach, according to interviews with leaders of three coalition groups.
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Indiana, Oklahoma, Arizona, New York, New Hampshire, and Hawaii have introduced legislation this year to restrict vaccine mandates. Indiana's legislature did not take up its bill in time for it to advance this year. State lawmakers are still considering the others.
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Florida's surgeon general last year said the state would end school vaccine mandates, though a bill being considered by the state legislature would expand allowable vaccine exemptions but keep attendance requirements in place.
- Medical experts say vaccine mandates, like for employment or school attendance, are a critical public health tool.
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Leah Douglas has more here.
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Immigration: The Trump administration will urge the 7th Circuit to overturn a judge's ruling requiring it to release hundreds of people from ICE detention centers who immigration rights advocates say were arrested without warrants or probable cause. The 7th Circuit had already stayed that decision pending appeal, but it had declined to disturb a separate holding by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings extending a consent decree by 118 days. The court will likely also during the appeal consider whether the administration's mandatory detention policy is lawful.
- Immigration: The 1st Circuit will consider whether to uphold a currently-paused injunction that would prevent the Trump administration from swiftly deporting migrants to countries other than their own without a meaningful chance to raise any fears that they would be persecuted or tortured if sent there.
- Immigration: U.S. District Judge Jerry Blackwell in Minnesota ordered a hearing on ICE's failure to comply with four of his orders, citing the order issued last week by Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz in Minneapolis.
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Environment: The 9th Circuit will hear an appeal of a dismissal of an action challenging President Biden’s designation of nearly 1 million acres of land near the Grand Canyon as the Ancestral Footprints National Monument in Arizona.
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Energy: The 5th Circuit will hear oral arguments in a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Department of Energy's energy-efficiency requirements for household washing machines and dishwashers. The lower court dismissed the lawsuit which was brought by a conservative think tank.
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Right to repair: The 1st Circuit will hear a challenge by a group representing automakers to a Massachusetts voter-approved measure that expanded access to vehicle data and allowed independent shops to repair increasingly sophisticated automotive technology.
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Government: U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in D.C. will hear U.S. Senator Mark Kelly's request for a court order blocking the Pentagon from cutting his retirement pay and reducing his rank.
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Trade secrets: OpenAI will ask U.S. District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco to dismiss rival xAI's lawsuit that alleges OpenAI hired away its engineers and stole its trade secrets to gain an unfair advantage in the race to develop AI technology. Read the complaint.
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Litigation: Opening statements are expected in a key test case accusing Meta Platforms and Google's YouTube of fueling a youth mental health crisis with addictive social media platforms.
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Litigation: The 5th Circuit will hear Mississippi’s appeal of a preliminary injunction blocking the state’s social media age verification law.
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Antitrust: Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos will face a grilling by Republicans in the U.S. Senate at a hearing over how his company's proposed $82.7 billion acquisition of Warner Bros will change the entertainment playing field.
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Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes. |
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Fenwick & West, which advised FTX before its 2022 blockbuster collapse and bankruptcy, has agreed to settle a lawsuit by FTX customers who alleged the law firm helped the crypto exchange’s chief executive carry out one of the largest financial frauds in U.S. history.
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London-founded law firm Clyde & Co entered a new U.S. legal market, opening an office in Seattle through a merger with 32-lawyer insurance coverage and litigation firm Forsberg & Umlauf.
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That’s how much King & Spalding and one of its former partners are being sued for over allegations that they tried to wrest the ownership of a health care-based investment fund away from its client. Read more here. |
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"In these settings, a judge’s expression of anxiety about executive-branch compliance with judicial orders, whether rightly feared or not, is not so far afield from customary topics at these meetings—judicial independence, judicial security, and inter-branch relations—as to violate the Codes of Judicial Conduct."
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—6th Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton dismissing |
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