iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Something all the Trump judges agree with, and that Mascott explicitly discusses, is that then-Judge Barrett was right when she said voting rights are somehow not as important as gun rights, and that felons can be permanently disenfranchised. So yeah whatever.

Separately, then-Judge Barrett pointed out in a separate writing on the Seventh Circuit in Kanter v. Barr that state power to permanently strip convicted felons of their voting rights has been recognized as constitutional. Does that enduring constraint on ex-convicts who have concluded serving time for their criminal offense provide some kind of record of a practice justifying a constraint on Second Amendment liberty for that same group? Not necessarily. As a policy and practical matter, most states automatically restore voting rights after release from custody. Some do not strip

61 See 919 F.3d 437, 453 (7th Cir. 2019) (Barrett, J., dissenting); see also Hawkins v. Youngkin, 149 F.4th 433, 441 (4th Cir. 2025), cert. denied sub nom. Hawkins v. Spanberger,
146 S. Ct. 1642 (2026) iạiStates may constitutionally disenfranchise felons, and the Constitution does not require States to ever restore those voting rights once lost, even after a person has completed their sentence and any period of paroleiẠại (citing Richardson v. Ramirez, 418 U.S. 24, 56 (1974))).
62 See Restoration of Voting Rights for Felons, NAT'L
CONF. STATE LEGISLATURES (Sept. 2, 2026),
https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/felon-voting-rights?maptype-tile iIn 23 states, felons lose their voting rights only while incarcerated, and receive automatic

incarcerated felons of their ability to vote in the first place.
Many others provide a process for voting rights restoration. 64
Judicial writings have at times distinguished between
"civic rights," such as voting rights, exercised "as part of the collective enterprise of self-governance," and "individual rights," like gun possession, free speech, and the exercise of religion. Arguably, the character of civic rights involving the affirmative responsibility to conscientiously and with integrity participate in society may perform functions distinct from the individual rights protections safeguarding against government intrusion and oppression.
66
restoration upon release.... In 15 states, felons lose their voting rights during incarceration, and for a period of time after, typically while on parole and/or probation. Voting rights are automatically restored after this time period.").
63 Id. (discussing District of Columbia, Maine, and Vermont).
64 See id.
65 Kanter, 919 F.3d at 462-63 (Barrett, J., dissenting); see also Gen. Bldg. Contractors Ass'n, Inc. v. Pennsylvania,
458 U.S. 375, 388 & n.19 (1982) (distinguishing between
"civil rights," like the right to enter contracts, and "political rights," like the right to vote).
% See Kanter, 919 F.3d at 453 (Barrett, J., dissenting) (observing that as a civic duty, voting involves the application of character and affirmative responsibility in contrast to a number of the individual rights spelled out in constitutional

But our legal system has not resolved whether voting rights and responsibilities and individual liberties are fully in pari materia. And putting aside any possible functional distinction between voting and individual rights, it's difficult to see, as a textual matter, why certain individual liberties cannot be permanently revoked upon conviction (speech), but others can (gun rights). And the terms of the Constitution do not appear on their face to distinguish between "the people" for purposes of individual rights versus collective societal participation. Consider the terms of the Bill of Rights. The phrase "the people" is employed to designate the group subject to the right in the context of individual liberties such as the First Amendment freedom of assembly and the Fourth Amendment freedom to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures along with the Second Amendment "right of the people to keep and bear Armsạồi But the Ninth and Tenth
amendments protecting the individual autonomy of "the peopleại.
" U.S. CONST. amend. I ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." (emphasis added)); id. amend. II ("A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." (emphasis added)); id. amend. IV ("The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated... (emphasis added)).

030

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 1h

(Irony holds in opposite direction for the concurring Dem judges maintaining that the felon-in-possession ban is constitutional under all circumstances)

SHWARTZ, Circuit Judge, concurring in the judgment, with whom KRAUSE and RESTREPO, Circuit Judges, join.
I agree with the Majority that James Bost's felony conviction for terroristic threats makes him ineligible to possess a firearm under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) and that his motion to dismiss the indictment based on a violation of the Second Amendment fails. I also agree with the Majority that the District Court correctly denied his motion to dismiss the charge under 18 U.S.C. § 922(j) for possession of a stolen firearm because our regulatory history bars the possession of stolen property of any sort, which includes stolen handguns. I write separately to emphasize my view that § 922(g)(1) constitutionally bans all felons from possessing firearms under Supreme Court precedent, history, and due process.

110

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 1h

(The majority opinion was also joined in full or part by two Biden judges, both of whom have sided with the court’s Republican judges on 2A issues and are the only active status Black judges on the circuit.)

110

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 1h

And then two other Trump judges, including Emil Bove, dissent, saying that anyone convicted of a felony, no matter how violent, cannot be permanently disarmed once they’ve done their time and paid their debt to society:

PHIPPS, Circuit Judge, dissenting, with whom BOVE, Circuit Judge, joins.
As this Court held in Range v. Attorney General, 124 F.4th 218 (3d Cir. 2024) (en banc), felons, despite their criminal histories, are part of 'the people' whose rights to keep and bear Arms are protected by the Second Amendment. Id. at 228.
Thus, under the Bruen framework, see N. Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 24 (2022), the only way that
18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), which criminalizes a felon's possession of a firearm or ammunition, can comport with the Second Amendment is if it is "consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation." United States v. Hemani,
608 U.S. 772, 780 (2026) (quoting Bruen, 597 U.S. at 24). But there is no historical analogue to justify the presumptive permanent disarmament effectuated by 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), and for that reason, I respectfully dissent.
As this Court previously recognizedạồin the Founding era, a felon could acquire arms after completing his sentence and reintegrating into society."
Range, 124 F.4th at 231.
Moreover, the earliest historical foundation for permanent disarmament of convicts dates back to the 1930s, and that was for persons who had committed violent crimes.! The modern restriction on felons - manifested through the expression
"convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by
Supreme Court has not "cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons,'
ại District

of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 626 (2008), this Court has explained that "a law passed in 1961—some 170 years after the Second Amendment's ratification and nearly a century after the Fourteenth Amendment's ratification-falls well short of 'longstanding' for purposes of demarcating the scope of a constitutional rightẠồ
Range, 124 F.4th at 229. Thus,
§ 922(g)(1) does something foreign to our historical tradition of firearms regulation - it presumptively permanently disarms an otherwise free person. For that reason, it is unconstitutional as applied to James Bost, who is a felon who has repaid his debt to society.4

210

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 1h

Another Trump judge, Jennifer Mascott, concurs to say that the categorical rule the majority announces is still too broad, and would demand fact-bound individual determinations per type of predicate violent offense. But like the majority, she believes the challenger here can be disarmed.

MASCOTT, Circuit Judge, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I respectfully concur in parts I, II.A, and IV of the Court's opinion and in the judgment affirming Mr. Bost's conviction. But under the Supreme Court's precedent in United States v. Rahimi,' I would decide this case on a more limited basis and find the application of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) constitutional only as applied to Mr. Bost's individual violent record and not categorically to an entire class of offenses. This Court is under-equipped to stand in legislative shoes and demarcate between constitutional and unconstitutional categorical statutory subclasses without the individual records before us of those whom the Court considers a continuing part of "the people."2
In Rahimi, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment permits restrictions on gun possession by
"individuals who pose a credible threat to the physical safety of othersại Here, this Court extends beyond its individualized holding on Mr. Bost and preemptively determines that a full category of felons may constitutionally be disarmed without any particular determination or requirement that those felons continue to pose an ongoing threat after serving time for their past crime. The Court's Part II.B historical recitation of certain

groups categorically limited in firearms possession does not provide evidence of a past practice supporting its broad holding on limiting constitutional protections. Those examples constitute firearms regulation of groups who at the time faced deep prejudice and lacked treatment as fully part of "the people." The collection of illustrations is no reed on which to establish a foundation of rights protection. Those examples represent cautionary tales and "historical evils."4 Therefore, I respectfully concur only with respect to the individualized application of § 922(g)(1) to Mr. Bost's violent and threatening record, consistent with the principles of Rahimi.

110

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Yes these Trump 1.0 strategies but also Trump 2.0 mask off no guardrails fascism

Mike Sacks
@MikeSacksEsq
STRATEGY 2:
Take to the extreme what you considered your opponents' bad acts. Claim you're doing the same thing, so what's the problem?
2:49 PM • 11/2/17 • From Washington, DC

Mike Sacks
@MikeSacksEsq
STRATEGY 3:
Throw away the dog whistle.
2:50 PM • 11/2/17 • From Washington, DC

Mike Sacks
@MikeSacksEsq
STRATEGY 5:
Conduct yourselves in extreme bad faith and mendacity, and trust the partisan process to project the same motivations onto the other s good taith and truthtul oppositior
4:54 PM • 1/31/18

092

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

“[I]f anything can overcome our viscerally retributive desire, it is our visceral repulsion to watching human life be extinguished. For all the clamoring to bring cameras into the Supreme Court, there should be equal clamoring to open up executions for all to see.”

IMMORTAL
The Supreme Court Will Never Kill the Death Penalty, Even With Botched Executions
Capital punishment is constitutional, but the way it's performed may never be. Only the public can shut down the machinery of death-if it sees it killing.
• The Daily Beast
By Mike Sacks PUBLISHED MAY 01, 2014 5:45AM EDT

But if anything can overcome our viscerally retributive desire, it is our visceral repulsion to watching human life be extinguished. For all the clamoring to bring cameras into the Supreme Court, there should be equal clamoring to open up executions for all to see. If we can't bring ourselves to force states to let us bear witness to what's done in our names, then journalists and activists and lawyers should force us all to do so. Such recordings have been done before as early as 1928 and as recently as this year in the Supreme Court.
The death penalty will survive one botched execution. But as Blackmun, Powell, and Stevens' drift over decades of exposure show, it may not survive a sustained effort to sear its effects into our psyches.

2236

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

And Stevens from his swan song: “It all depends on judges' exercising careful, reasoned judgment. As it always has, and as it always will.”

McDonald v. City of Chicago, II., 561 US 742 - Supre...
As for "the democratic process," ante, at 3057-3058, a method that looks exclusively to history can easily do more harm than good. Just consider this case. The net result of Justice SCALIA's supposedly objective analysis is to vest federal judges— ultimately a majority of the judges on this Court-with unprecedented lawmaking powers in an area in which they have no special qualifications, and in which the give-and-take of the political process has functioned effectively for decades. Why this "intrudes much less upon the democratic process, ante, at 3058, than an approach that would defer to the democratic process on the regulation of firearms is, to say the least, not self-evident. I cannot even tell what, under Justice SCALIA's view, constitutes an "intrusion."
It is worth pondering, furthermore, the vision of democracy that underlies Justice SCALIA's critique.
Very few of us would welcome a system in which majorities or powerful interest groups always get their way. Under our constitutional scheme, I would have thought that a judicial approach to liberty claims such as the one I have outlined-an approach that investigates both the intrinsic nature of the claimed interest and the practical significance of its judicial enforcement, that is transparent in its reasoning and sincere in its effort to incorporate constraints, that is guided by history but not beholden to it, and that is willing to protect some rights even if they have not already received uniform protection from the elected branches-has the capacity to improve, rather than " [im]periliỊante, at 3058, our democracy. It all depends on judges' exercising careful, reasoned judgment. As it always has, and as it always will.

032

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Dude’s pretty much fessing up to being a common law constitutionalist like Stevens and Souter, but with none of the small-c conservative restraint either showed even as they turned left

Alito usefully highlights important theoretical conundrums for originalism. A central one is how to tell whether the invariably fuzzy meaning of an old term (equal protection, for example) should be applied in specific contexts that the Framers never imagined.
Scholars offer an array of complex and clashing solutions to this and related difficulties. Alito invokes judicial "judgment" as the global solution. "Broadly worded constitutional provisions can be regarded as delegating a degree of authority to apply those provisions to new situations that could not be anticipated at the time of adoption," he maintains. "Identifying just how far this delegation of authority extends calls for the exercise of judgment."

53616

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Gorsuch understands the assignment on Mass v. EPA

080

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Legal: Fed cts shouldn't strike down Acts of Congress absent clear constitutional constraints. Biden judge tries to prove clear constraint. Political: Rubio gonna be mad! Rubio rec'd judge to Biden (and Trump 1.0) bc judge's uncle was a big $$ Rubio donor! storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

2188

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

CA5 panel of three MAGA judges suggests that a faith-based auto repair business could maybe invoke the ministerial exception that religious employers like churches and parochial schools enjoy to exempt themselves from antidiscrimination laws in hiring and firing www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub...

Alternatively, Christian Brothers defends the district court’s judgment on the
ground that its franchise policy is insulated by the First Amendment’s protections for the
autonomy of religious organizations. See Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church &
Sch. v. EEOC, 565 U.S. 171, 181 (2012); McRaney v. N. Am. Mission Bd. of the S. Baptist
Convention, Inc., 157 F.4th 627, 635–41 (5th Cir. 2025), cert. denied, 146 S. Ct. 1674 (2026).
Church autonomy doctrines like the ministerial exception are “immunities from suit that
must be resolved at the earliest conceivable point in litigation” when they are

implicated. McRaney, 157 F.4th at 644. That is because “the very process of inquiry” into
a religious entity’s internal affairs by a civil court violates the First Amendment. NLRB v.
Cath. Bishop of Chi., 440 US. 490, 502 (1979). The record, however, is not sufficiently
developed for us to decide how the religious autonomy doctrines might apply to Christian
Brothers’s business. Accordingly, we decline to address the question.

Andrew S. Oldham, Circuit Judge, concurring in the judgment:
I agree with my esteemed colleagues’ bottom-line conclusion that
Christian Brothers is entitled to summary judgment. I write separately to
make two points. First, we are required to reach the ministerial exception at
the outset. And second, I remain dubious of our circuit’s interpretation of
McDonnell Douglas.
I
Church autonomy doctrines like the ministerial exception represent
“immunities from suit.” McRaney v. N. Am. Mission Bd. of the S. Baptist
Convention, Inc., 157 F.4th 627, 644 (5th Cir. 2025). They work to spare
religious institutions from “the very process of inquiry” into their internal
affairs. NLRB v. Cath. Bishop of Chi., 440 U.S. 490, 502 (1979). As the
Supreme Court has explained, the First Amendment “prohibits government
involvement in . . . ecclesiastical decisions,” makes it “impermissible” for a
court to “contradict a church’s determination of who can act as its
ministers,” and otherwise “bars” covered suits. Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical
Lutheran Church & Sch. v. EEOC, 565 U.S. 171, 189, 185, 196 (2012). An
invocation of the church autonomy doctrines “must be resolved at the
earliest conceivable point in litigation.” McRaney, 157 F.4th at 644.
Courts undertake a holistic inquiry to determine whether an employee
is a “minister” for church autonomy purposes. Hosanna-Tabor, 565 U.S. at
190–93. “Not all pre-Hosanna-Tabor decisions applying the exception
involved ‘ministers’ or even members of the clergy.” Our Lady of Guadalupe
Sch. v. Morrissey-Berru, 591 U.S. 732, 747 (2020). Thus, it is irrelevant
whether a party calls or does not call the relevant employee a “minister”:
If titles were all-important, courts would have to decide which
titles count and which do not, and it is hard to see how that
could be done without looking behind the titles to what the

positions actually entail. Moreover, attaching too much
significance to titles would risk privileging religious traditions
with formal organizational structures over those that are less
formal.
Id. at 753. “What matters, at bottom, is what an employee does.” Ibid. Thus,
the Hosanna-Tabor exception extends to “any ‘employee’ who leads a
religious organization, conducts worship services or important religious
ceremonies or rituals, or serves as a messenger or teacher of its faith.” Hosanna-
Tabor, 565 U.S. at 199 (Alito, J., concurring) (emphasis added); see also Our
Lady of Guadalupe, 591 U.S. at 754 (adopting this statement).
The problem, on this record, is that it is unclear what the Christian
Brothers’ franchisees do. If they serve as messengers or teachers of Christian
Brothers’ faith, then they could qualify for the ministerial exception. But my
esteemed colleagues are quite right that we do not have the information
necessary to make that determination at this stage. Given our obligation to
decide the question at the outset anyway, see McRaney, 157 F.4th at 644, we
must deny Christian Brothers’ invocation of the Hosanna-Tabor exception
without prejudice to the company’s right to raise it later. Cf. ante, at 4 n.2.
And as it turns out, there will be no later because the company wins at
summary judgment on other grounds.

062

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE KAGAN and
JUSTICE JACKSON join, dissenting.

010

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

4 years ago, Trump Judge Kathryn Mizelle vacated Biden’s airplane mask mandate: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us... Now, Trump Judge Kathryn Mizelle says vacating rules is likely unconstitutional: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us... I wonder what changed! Grab 1: Then Grab 2: Now

629693

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

www.supremecourt.gov/orders/court...

Justice Sotomayor, Justice Kagan, and Justice Jackson would
deny the application for stay.

150

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The arg is whether SCOCO's decision was a final judgment, and whether Suncor's having to spend money on litigation of its own creation constitutes the kind of pocketbook injury giving rise to standing: Grab 1: Suncor Brief Grabs 2&3: County/City Brief

192

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Typically, SCOTUS just accepts the questions presented by the petitioner. Here, the justice added a question that the respondent had presented in its opposition brief. That's significant. Grab 1: Suncor's cert petition QPs Grab 2: Boulder's brief in opposition QPs Grab 3: SCOTUS's cert grant QPs

2133

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

JUSTICE JACKSON, with whom JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR and
JUSTICE KAGAN join, dissenting.

141

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Remember how SCOTUS almost required states to publicly fund religious charter schools but didn’t bc Barrett’s refusal caused a 4-4 deadlock? Yeah she’s not gonna recuse from this one. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

01814

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

OK fine get me started on Slaughterhouse [finds 2009 law school paper for Judicial Politics class]

120

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Aaaaaand this case that motivated such early Trump 2.0 authoritarian bravado just mooted out storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

053

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Sometimes a TV show is so transcendent that they just gotta name a street after it

2131

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I mean, checks out. Dude’s been busy hacking away en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._Elli...

After graduating from the University of Chicago Law School, Gaiser clerked for appellate judges Edith H. Jones, Neomi Rao, and then Justice Samuel Alito. He was involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. In October 2023, Dave Yost, the Attorney General of Ohio, named Gaiser as the state's solicitor general.
In April 2025, president Donald Trump named Gaiser as his nominee for assistant attorney
general for the Office of Legal Counsel. He was confirmed by the Senate in July and took office the following month.

In September, Gaiser signed a memorandum arguing that the U.S.'s maritime strikes on alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean were lawful, comparing alleged drug traffickers to foreign nations attempting to invade the United States. 23] In November, he told congressional lawmakers that the U.S. strikes on Latin American cartels was not subject to the War
Powers Resolution and did not require congressional approval, an interpretation disputed by some legal experts as a violation of U.S. and international law. 24] That month, he authored a memorandum arguing that it was legal to detail military lawyers as immigration judges. The memorandum was criticized by some legal scholars as an unprecedented expansion of executive authority. (251

In December 2025, Gaiser drafted a memo declaring it lawful for the Trump administration
to order a military operation to seize Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. 26] The following month, he issued an opinion declaring that a federal statute prohibiting the mailing of
concealable firearms was unconstitutional. 27] In April 2026, Gaiser authored an opinion declaring that the Presidential Records Act
unconstitutionally infringed on the president's executive authority and that Trump did not need to provide presidential records to the National Archives and Records Administration, claiming that the act was "untethered from any valid and identifiable legislative purpose" [19] In May, he supported a proposal by the Department of Justice to use Keepseagle v. Vilsack (2016), a class-action lawsuit settlement, to establish the Anti-Weaponization Fund, a program to compensate victims of supposed prosecutorial
overreach. 28]

1243

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Trump’s DOJ says it will not enforce the federal law barring gun sales to 18-20 year olds because it violates the 2nd Amendment. SCOTUS has so far declined every opportunity to resolve the circuit split. www.justice.gov/olc/media/14...

(Slip Opinion)
Application of 18 U.S.C. § 922(b)(1) and (c)(1) to
Young Adults
prevents young adults, who are members of "the people" to whom the Second
Nation's tradition of firearm regulation, which it cannot do.
September 17, 2026
MEMORANDUM OPINION FOR THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
Our laws deem an eighteen-year-old "mature enough to be drafted, vote, serve as a juror, and be sentenced to deathại One such eighteen-year-old represented the United States at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, shooting skeet? Yet, due to statutes predicated on concerns over an eighteen-year-old's ability to handle a pistol as a responsible adult, it would have been a federal felony if a licensed dealer had sold her such a firearm before she left or after she returned to her studies at the University of Texas at Arlington. See 18 U.S.C. § 922(b)(1), (c)(1). You have asked whether that restriction may be enforced against otherwise law-abiding citizens between the ages of eighteen and twenty who seek to purchase a handgun consistent with the individual right to keep and bear arms recognized by District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), and
"fleshed out," Wolford v. Lopez, 146 S. Ct. 2032, 2043 (2026), in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022). It may not. Section 922(b)(1) and (c)(1) may not be enforced to impose criminal penalties on dealers who sell handguns to a class of law-abiding adults who, in nearly every other relevant respect, are members of the political community.

In sum, because the modern federal age restrictions limit young adults between the ages of eighteen and twenty from obtaining arms, they "fall[] within the plain text of the Second Amendment" and are "presumptively unconstitutional." Wolford, 146 S. Ct. at 2044. As we have not identified
"any analogue or collection of analogues" that "is 'relevantly similar' to the modern law," our view is that the government is unable to overcome this presumption. Id. (quoting Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2132).
In reaching this conclusion, we are aware that we are not writing on a
government (state or federal) to bar young adults from obtaining firearms has deeply divided members of the federal bench. 42 Having carefully considered these courts' decisions, we do not think that their reasons for reaching a contrary conclusion under Bruen can be reconciled with the Court's intervening clarifications in Hemani and Wolford. 4 Thus, we do
advice it gives you as you assist the President in the performance of his independent constitutional duty to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." U.S. Const. art. II, § 3; see also Application of the Rehabilita-
Patients with Severe Mental Illness or Disabilities, 50 Op. O.L.C. _, at
*12 (June 18, 2026); Section 1715 at *14; cf. Eric S. Fish, Prosecutorial Constitutionalism, 90 S. Cal. L. Rev. 237, 254 (2017) (noting that "a number of important constitutional rights go underenforced by judges"_and
42 Compare Reese, 127 F.4th 583 (invalidating the federal age restrictions at issue here), Worth, 108 F.4th 677 (invalidating Minnesota's age-based public-carry re-
Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, 121 F.4th 96 (sustaining Colorado's age-based purchase restrictions).
1687.

that Executive Branch officials should "supplement judges' enforcement
ing processesằ_.
We conclude by noting, however, a few limits on this opinion. For ex-ample, we do not address the age-neutral conditions and qualifications on commercial sales, the prohibition on the possession of handguns by those under eighteen, 18 U.S.C. § 922(x), or even the enhanced investigative period Congress has prescribed for purchasers under twenty-one, id.
§ 922(t) (1)(C); see also generally McRorey v. Garland, 99 F.4th 831 (5th Cir. 2024). And nothing in this opinion should be read to cast doubt on the distinct prohibitions of section 922(g), certain of which the Supreme Court has recently discussed with approval. See Hemani, 146 S. Ct. at 1692 n.6.
tion as it applies to sales to persons under eighteen, who-though part of
"the people" for the purposes of the Constitution-may constitutionally be subject to certain legal disabilities until they reach the age of majority,
Part II.B.2; cf. Paxton, 145 S. Ct. at 2300.
Instead, we conclude only that section 922(b)(1) and (c)(1) may not be enforced to impose criminal penalties on dealers who sell handguns, the
"quintessential self-defense weapon," Heller, 554 U.S. at 629, to a class
of the political community.
T. ELLIOT GAISER
Assistant Attorney General
Office of Legal Counsel

43120

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

CA5, 2-1, says federal law banning buying and selling guns across state lines violates the 2nd Amendment. Reagan, Trump judges in majority. Normie GWB judge in dissent. www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub...

Before SMITH, HAYNES, and ENGELHARDT, Circuit Judges.
JERRY E. SMITH, Circuit Judge:
Plaintiffs unsuccessfully sought a permanent injunction against sev-
Bruen, they implicate the Second Amendment's plain text, making them pre-
Case: 25-11206
Document: 83-1 Page: 2 Date Filed: 09/18/2026
No. 25-11206
den to justify the provisions as consistent with the nation's tradition of firearms regulation. We reverse and render judgment for plaintiffs.

Haynes, Circuit Judge, dissenting:
I respect the majority opinion, but I respectfully dissent. I agree with
the district court’s decision that the several provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 922
discussed in this case are not unconstitutional under the Second
Amendment. That is all that is in play in this case, thus, I would affirm.

163

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Trump's doing this bc a Trump-majority CADC panel green-lit last year his banning the AP from the Oval Office pending appeal of the injunction against him (see grabs)...and the same 2 Trump judges are on the merits panel that heard oral args in Nov. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

33712

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

CA2 made it a 7-2 circuit split, so seems likely SCOTUS would grant this petition coming up from CA5

1172

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

CA2 says federal government can conduct suspicionless searches of any international traveler's cellphones - even U.S. citizens! - upon arrival at the border. The 2nd Circuit covers JFK Airport. Biden judge concurs in the judgment to say WTF! storage.courtlistener.com/pdf/2026/09/...

14217

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

This is getting way out of hand www.ca1.uscourts.gov/sites/ca1/fi...

126010

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Of course Thomas could also just try to keep going till 2034

1142

Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

(Though it's...ambiguous...whether the panel's citing LB for its confirmation of the general rule that no deference is owed to agency interpretations of unambiguous statutes, rather than on LB's specific holding that agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes also get no deference.)

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Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Your SCOTUS allies not saving you from SCOMO’s contempt threat will do that to you

Denny Hoskins, CPA
Missouri Secretary of State
For Immediate Release: Sept. 10, 2026
Statement from Missouri Secretary of State Denny
Hoskins
Following the United States Supreme Court's stay, the only governing court order in effect is from the Missouri Supreme Court. In accordance with that order, my Office is directing local election authorities to use the 2022 congressional map.

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Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

All the numbered circuits have spoken. It's a 9-2 split. Only the MAGA 5th and 8th have sided with Trump:

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Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

CA4, 2-1, says Trump can’t detain without bond undocumented immigrants found within the country’s interior (as opposed to at the border). Obama, Biden judges in majority. Trump judge dissents. Ruling deepens circuit split. This issue is def SCOTUS-bound. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

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Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

This 9/11 remembrance from @hillaryclinton.bsky.social makes me so furious on so many levels. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

The EPA continued to be unhelpful and at times untruthful. The full extent of the deception did not emerge until August 2003. An investigation by the EPA’s inspector general found that, in the aftermath of the attacks, White House officials instructed the agency to reassure New Yorkers that the air was safe to breathe, even though deadly contaminants such as asbestos and lead were present. The agency “did not have sufficient data and analyses” to back up its statements, the report said, noting that “competing considerations” such as reopening Wall Street played a role in their deception.

I believe that President Bush himself genuinely wanted to do the right thing for New York. Three days after the attacks, he stood on a pile of rubble at Ground Zero, put his arm around a firefighter, and pledged his support. But members of his administration were eager to restore a sense of “open for business” normalcy. Alarming reports about toxic air near Wall Street would have made for inconvenient messaging.

In my decades of public service, I have rarely been as angry as I was the day that the damning inspector general’s report was released. I thought of the firefighters working around the clock in poisonous dust and soot. I thought of Sister Cindy Mahoney, a nun who volunteered as an EMT at Ground Zero and prayed with weary workers—a few years later, she died of severe respiratory failure and asked for her body to be autopsied for evidence of the effects of exposure. I thought of every resident and responder I’d met with over the past two years, each with their own quiet stories of loss and heroism.

The government had told them the air was safe to breathe. It wasn’t. And they knew that.

Representative Jerry Nadler and I immediately organized a press conference on the steps of city hall, just blocks from Ground Zero, along with doctors and first responders who’d been lied to. I am usually someone who keeps her cool. This time, I lost my temper. “I know a little bit about how White Houses work,” I said, my fury rising. “I know somebody picked up a phone, somebody got on a computer, somebody sent an email, somebody called for a meeting, somebody in that White House, probably under instructions from somebody further up the chain, told the EPA: ‘Don’t tell the people of New York the truth.’ And I want to know who that is.”

The Bush administration never really came clean about its lies about the dirty air. For a lot of people, it became just one more example of government corruption and incompetence. As time passed and more responders became sick, I pushed to expand medical monitoring and treatment. But media attention moved on, and the political will in Washington to act dissipated. In 2005, Congress tried to rescind $125 million that had already been appropriated for injured responders’ health monitoring. It took a lot of shaming and arm-twisting to get it restored.

In 2006, Mount Sinai Hospital reported that nearly 70 percent of the roughly 9,500 responders it examined had developed a new or worsened respiratory symptom. That same year, James Zadroga, an NYPD detective who had spent more than 450 hours at Ground Zero, died after becoming gravely ill. His death made painfully clear what many responders and their families had been telling us for years: This wasn’t simply about monitoring people to see whether they might get sick. People were already sick, and they needed care.

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Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Hey look it’s Alito’s former clerk and shortlister for his seat going to bat in dissent for a magistrate judge that failed to disclose a massive conflict of interest! www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub...

Before STEWART, GRAVES, and OLDHAM, Circuit Judges.
JAMES E. GRAVES, JR., Circuit Judge:
After presiding over a bench trial by consent, U.S. Magistrate Judge Kathleen Kay awarded IF Port Holdings almost $125 million. The losing side, the Lake Charles Harbor and Terminal District (the Port), later discovered that Judge Kay and IFG's lead trial counsel had been close family friends for nearly forty years. All Judge Kay had disclosed about the friendship was that IFG's lead counsel's daughter was her law clerk, who would be screened from the case. At best, this disclosure was incomplete.
Case: 24-30552 Document: 127-1 Page: 2 Date Filed: 09/08/2026
No. 24-30552
The Port seeks to vacate the magistrate judge referral. Yet IF G claims that the Port's post-consent constructive knowledge of the friendship can sustain the referral. It cannot.
To waive Article III jurisdiction, a party must knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently consent. We construe this standard consistently with other waivers of fundamental rights, such as pleading guilty or waiving a jury trial.
A party must fully understand what the waiver connotes and its consequence.
And we must indulge every reasonable presumption against waiver. Because a constructive knowledge standard would presume a waiver without full understanding, we reject it.
Hence the district court applied the right standard: For the Port's consent to be knowing, it must have actually known the nature and extent of Judge Kay's conflict before judgment. We AFFIRM.

ANDREW S. OLDHAM, Circuit Judge, dissenting:
The Lake Charles Port lost a trial worth more than $120 million. The Port's lawyers were understandably upset. What's less understandable is what they chose to do about it.
The Port's lawyers attempted to vacate the judgment based on the fact that opposing counsel's daughter clerked for the magistrate judge who tried the case. Everyone-including the Port's lawyers —knew this fact before trial. The law clerk was recused from the matter. And the Port consented to the magistrate judge trying the case anyway.
Still, the point of the Hail Mary pass is that it sometimes works. And
for the Port, that sometime is today.
I respectfully dissent. The majority's legal rule conflicts with the statutory text and Supreme Court precedent. It also contradicts circuit authority, encourages parties to scrutinize judges' private affairs, and jeopardizes virtually all magistrate and bankruptcy judge orders.

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Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

The challengers to Texas's 10 Commandments in Schools law filed their cert petition with SCOTUS in mid-August: www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?...

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Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

So it is weird that the en banc majority here entirely omitted any discussion of the state-created danger doctrine, as the dissent notes. Maybe the majority wanted to insulate CA5's outlier status from SCOTUS review given that this case is a better vehicle than the 2023 one?

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Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Both the majority and the dissent appear to agree that this decision conflicts with CA6's finding a violation of the well-established right to bodily autonomy in the Flint Water Crisis. Majority in first two grabs. Dissent third grab. We know which way SCOTUS would go if asked to resolve the split

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Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Article III courts have refused to issue advisory opinions ever since Chief Justice Jay rejected President Washington's request for one back in 1793. But it seems there's a hack: ask an executive agency for an advisory opinion, then get a federal court to review whether the agency got it right.

Before: RAO and WALKER, Circuit Judges, and
RANDOLPH, Senior Circuit Judge.
Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge RAO.
RAO, Circuit Judge: Vertex Pharmaceuticals developed a
gene therapy that treats two hereditary blood disorders but may
have adverse effects on fertility. To address the risk that
fertility concerns might deter individuals from taking the
therapy, Vertex designed a program that would offer patients
up to $70,000 to support fertility services. Vertex requested an
advisory opinion from the Department of Health and Human
Services to ensure its program complied with federal law. After
a long delay, HHS issued an unfavorable advisory opinion,
concluding that Vertex’s program would violate both the AntiKickback Statute and the Beneficiary Inducement Statute.
Vertex sued, claiming the advisory opinion was unlawful and
unreasonable. Vertex also challenged HHS’s regulations
regarding the timing for issuing advisory opinions. The district
court granted summary judgment for HHS across the board.
HHS correctly determined that Vertex’s program would
run afoul of the Anti-Kickback Statute. We affirm summary
judgment as to that part of the advisory opinion, but otherwise
reverse. HHS failed to adequately explain why the program
would violate the Beneficiary Inducement Statute, and the
timing regulations unlawfully evade a statutory deadline for
issuing advisory opinions.

https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2026/09/25-5133-2191499.pdf

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Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

CA3 rejects 2nd Amendment challenge to the federal ban on machine gun possession. Trump judge writes unanimous panel opinion for Obama and Biden judges. www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/242...

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Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

CA8: Don't sell body parts via FB Messenger, kids (or anywhere) ecf.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/26/09...

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Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Roberts's dissent is the closest he's ever gotten to vitiating Trump's presumption of regularity, and the drollness is deafening: www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

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