D.C. Circuit Court

As Hurricane Sandy Closes Many East Coast Courts, Supreme Court Stays Open on Monday

Updated: The U.S. Supreme Court isn’t going to let Hurricane Sandy put a damper on its proceedings, at least not on Monday. Even as courts and governments across the Eastern United States are shutting down, the top court plans to stick to its oral argument schedule, Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy…

Oct 29, 2012 11:38 AM CDT

Law Firm Seeks 12.5 Percent Share of Ex-Banker Birkenfeld’s $104M IRS Whistleblower Award

A Washington, D.C., law firm retained by Bradley Birkenfeld to help him tell U.S. authorities how a Swiss bank was aiding Americans in evading taxes is now seeking a 12.5 percent of his $104 million whistleblower award from the Internal Revenue Service. The former employee of UBS AG, the biggest…

Oct 17, 2012 4:30 PM CDT

As DC Circuit Weighs the Future of Guantanamo Inmates, Some Say Judicial Review Can Harm Military

Federal appeals Judge A. Raymond Randolph is an admirer of the 18th century English critic Samuel Johnson. But it was Nick Carraway, the narrator of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, whom Randolph found himself quoting during a 2010 lecture at the Heritage Foundation. “They were careless people. … They…

Oct 1, 2012 10:10 AM CDT

Detention Policies: What Role for Judicial Review?

Editor’s note: Professor Stephen I. Vladeck of the Washington College of Law at American University and Greg Jacob, a partner at O’Melveny & Myers in Washington, D.C., examine the intricacies of U.S. detention policy. Their essays are among those collected in Patriots Debate: Contemporary Issues in National Security Law, a…

Oct 1, 2012 9:59 AM CDT

Federal Court Strikes Down Texas Voter ID Law

A federal court ruled that the state of Texas could not show that a new voter ID law would not harm the voting rights of its minorities and struck down the legislation. The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was unswayed by state…

Aug 30, 2012 9:45 PM CDT

DC Circuit Strikes Down FDA Rules Requiring Graphic Images on Cigarette Packaging

Federal rules which require graphic warning images on cigarette packages were struck down today in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, on the basis that the mandates violate corporate speech rights. One of the images featured a man exhaling smoke through a hole in his throat,…

Aug 24, 2012 4:00 PM CDT

Divided Appeals Court Rejects Ethanol Challenge

A federal appeals court on Friday rejected a challenge to new Environmental Protection Agency regulations allowing for higher concentrations of corn-based ethanol in gasoline. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that representatives from the grocery, automobile and petroleum industries failed to show they suffered…

Aug 17, 2012 4:13 PM CDT

House Committee Sues AG Holder for Civil Contempt, Asks Judge to Nix Obama Executive Privilege Claim

Setting the stage for a constitutional showdown during a presidential election year, an expected effort has begun to enforce a historic contempt citation of a sitting U.S. attorney general by the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this summer. On Monday, the House Oversight Committee filed a federal civil contempt lawsuit…

Aug 13, 2012 6:30 PM CDT

State Department Employee Can Sue for Age Discrimination, DC Circuit Rules

The State Department can not engage in age discrimination, even if the employee resides in a country that condones the behavior, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found today, in an action brought by a former Paris U.S. embassy worker forced to retire at age 65.…

Aug 7, 2012 10:06 PM CDT

After Blasting Prosecutors, Federal Judge Releases Piracy Case Defendant, Axes 2 of 4 Charges

After blasting prosecutors in a Friday hearing, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday released a defendant in a Somali piracy case while the government appeals some of her pretrial rulings and dismissed two of the four counts he faced. The appeal could delay the trial of Ali Mohamed…

Jul 24, 2012 9:53 PM CDT

Federal Judge Blasts US Prosecutors for ‘Unbelievably Inexcusable Behavior’ in Somali Piracy Case

Visibly angry and getting more so after learning shortly before trial that prosecutors could place a Somali piracy case defendant in international waters for only 24 to 28 minutes, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., gave them a piece of her mind. Saying that she was “misled” by a government…

Jul 23, 2012 10:11 PM CDT

Fed’l Judge Nixes SEC Suit, Says SIPC Not Liable for Bank CDs Bought by Victims of Stanford Swindle

A federal judge district court judge in Washington, D.C., has sided with the Securities Investor Protection Corp. in a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in an effort to provide some reimbursement to the victims of the $6 billion to $7 billion Ponzi scheme overseen by R.…

Jul 3, 2012 5:12 PM CDT

DOJ Won’t Prosecute AG Holder re US House Contempt Citation

Saying that it wasn’t a crime for U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to withhold information sought by a congressional committee concerning the feds’ botched Fast and Furious gun-trafficking investigation, the Department of Justice has announced that it won’t prosecute the nation’s top law enforcement officer for contempt. In a letter…

Jun 29, 2012 8:26 PM CDT

Jury Verdict in Roger Clemens Perjury Case: Not Guilty

More than two months after jury selection began, a verdict has been reached in the perjury trial of baseball great Roger Clemens. Accused of lying when he told a congressional committee in 2008 that he had never used steroids or human growth hormone, the former star pitcher for the New…

Jun 18, 2012 8:54 PM CDT

A Federal Appeals Court’s Nuclear Opinion Takes Lawyers to Task for Acronyms

A federal appeals court is fed up with little-known energy acronyms like “SNF” and “NWPA.” In a ruling (PDF) last week , the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit showed its irritation in its first footnote, according to The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times. The…

Jun 6, 2012 12:56 PM CDT