FedSoc Forums

One year ago, U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta held that “Google is a monopolist and has acted as one to maintain its monopoly”, and, in doing so, violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act. On Tuesday, September 2, 2025, Judge Mehta’s remedy decision rejected the United States’ request for structural relief and indicated only limited conduct and behavioral requirements w...

In First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc. v. Platkin, the New Jersey Attorney General, Matthew Platkin, issued a subpoena to a faith-based, pro-life, nonprofit, requiring that it turn over years of sensitive information, including the names and contact information of its donors. First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, which provides free medical services and is funded by private do...

In April, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to rescind a regulation defining the Endangered Species Act’s prohibition against “harm” to an endangered species to include destruction and modification of habitat. That regulation was previously upheld by the Supreme Court under Chevron in Sweet Home v. Babbitt, over a sharp dissent by Justice Scalia accusing the agency of imposi...

In 2020 and 2021, Idaho and West Virginia passed laws that required public schools and colleges to designate sports by biological sex and to forbid males from competing on women’s sports teams. Two male athletes who identified as females, one a middle school shot-put and discus thrower and the other a collegiate cross-country runner, challenged the laws in the U.S. District Courts for the Di...

In Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, the U.S. Supreme Court took up the question of whether the operation of charter schools by religious entities was constitutionally permissible (or even required). The Court deadlocked 4-4, leaving in place a ruling by the Oklahoma Supreme Court that the religious charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, violated the Est...

CLE credit for this event is available at On-Demand CLE. In this CLE webinar, David Cunanan, John J. Park, and Phillip Sechler will discuss recent important developments in the realm of legal ethics and professional responsibility, including the recent adoption of changes to an Arizona rule restricting who can be a complainant for purposes of state bar ethics complaints, developments related to Ru...

Across the country, bar associations are increasingly at the center of legal and political controversy. Recent disciplinary proceedings—such as efforts by the DC Bar to disbar Acting OIRA Administrator Jeffrey Clark, ethics complaints against Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen and Ninth Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke—have raised urgent questions about the line between professional...

Qualified immunity shields all government officials from suit when the constitutional rights they violate are not “clearly established.” Yet the public conversation often centers on police officers. Supreme Court cases on the doctrine frequently involve split-second law enforcement decisions, and when Congress considered reform in the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020, its f...

The ongoing case of Etienne v. Ferguson raises profound questions about the interplay between religious liberty and state authority, particularly regarding Catholic confession, which centuries-old religious doctrine deems as absolutely confidential. The case challenges Washington's Senate Bill 5375, titled "Concering the duty of clergy to report child abuse and neglect." Does a state mandatory rep...

Congress is currently debating the Antisemitism Awareness Act. This proposed legislation aims to provide a clear definition of antisemitism for use in enforcing existing civil rights laws. Supporters argue that the bill is a crucial tool for combating rising antisemitism by filling a gap in current legal definitions. Opponents, however, contend that the bill could stifle free speech and limit crit...

The recent dismissal of the Librarian of Congress and the Register of Copyrights by President Trump raises fundamental questions about the scope of the President’s removal authority and the constitutional status of these offices. Do these officials exercise executive power such that they must be removable at will? Or has Congress validly restricted removal in pursuit of independence? This pa...

Join the Federalist Society for a discussion on the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA), legislation aimed at clarifying and restoring patent eligibility in the United States. Specifically, the bill seeks to restore patent eligibility to inventions that have been deemed ineligible by recent court decisions. The panel brings together top voices in patent law: David Jones, Executive Director a...

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has come under increasing criticism, with some accusing it of constantly reversing precedent, especially in cases involving labor policy issues. Professor Sam Estreicher of the NYU School of Law describes this supposed “policy oscillation” as having created unpredictability for employers, unions, and all stakeholders under the Act as to the sta...

In recent months, a number of new legal theories and tools have been proposed – some prominently used – in civil rights cases, many involving anti-Semitism in higher education. What legal mechanisms are available against universities, whether in governmental enforcement actions or private party lawsuits? Is Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 being used in new ways? What about oth...

Since January 2025, the National Labor Relations Board has had only two sitting members—one less than necessary for a quorum. When it lacks a quorum, the Board can’t do things like resolve alleged unfair labor practices or rule on election-related objections. Seeing a policy gap, some states are moving to fill it. California, New York, and Massachusetts are all considering legislation...

The United States Supreme Court first acknowledged what would become the church autonomy doctrine, also known as the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine, in the 1871 case of Watson v. Jones, 80 U.S. 679 (1871). That case involved a schism in a Presbyterian church in Louisville, Kentucky, over the issue of slavery. The Court fashioned a principle that civil courts should not decide issues regarding...

The outcome of FTC v. Meta could reshape the social media landscape as well as U.S. merger policy. For the first time, the government is seeking to unwind two acquisitions more than a decade old, Facebook's purchase of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. In its complaint, the Federal Trade Commission alleges that Facebook sought to eliminate threats to its social networking monopoly and ultima...

Join the Federalist Society for a timely and compelling discussion on the RESTORE Act, legislation aimed at overturning the Supreme Court’s eBay v. MercExchange decision and reinstating the presumptive right to injunctions for patent holders. This panel brings together some of the top voices in intellectual property: former USPTO Director Andrei Iancu, Professors Adam Mossoff and Kristen Ose...

Join the Federalist Society for a webinar on the ongoing legal challenges to the Biden-era Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program, a component of the Inflation Reduction Act. Ashley Parrish, Partner at King & Spalding, will provide an analysis of the multi-faceted litigation. He will explore how pharmaceutical companies are arguing that the program prevents accountability by granting the gove...

On January 20, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order effectively ending birthright citizenship for children born to mothers who are unlawfully present or temporary lawful residents in the United States and whose fathers are not lawful permanent residents at the time of the child’s birth. One day later, four states and three individuals challenged this order in the U.S. District Cou...

Early in his Chairmanship, Federal Communications Chair Chairman Brendan Carr established a new Council for National Security within the agency. The council aims to "leverage the full range of the Commission’s regulatory, investigatory, and enforcement authorities to protect American and counter foreign adversaries, particularly the threats posed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC)...

Title IX's guarantee against discrimination on the basis of sex in education has been the subject of intensely differing Executive Branch interpretations over the years. These disputes include fundamental disagreements over the meaning of the word "sex" as used in the law, the manner in which the law applies to sex-separated sports and private facilities, the role of Title IX coordinators in respo...

Over the past decade, electricity prices for consumers have risen by more than 22% on average. At the same time, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC)—the international body responsible for setting reliability and security standards for the North American power grid—has issued increasingly urgent warnings about the growing risks to the U.S. electric power system's...

Whether AI training and generation is a fair use under copyright law puts two important American business sectors in opposition, and each looks to the various branches of the federal government for answers. Fundamentally, essentially all training of AI models involves copying of copyrighted materials, and many outputs from AI systems also may be substantially similar to copyrighted material and th...

Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton concerned Texas Law H.B. 1181, and what precedent should apply in considering its impact on free speech. Passed in 2023, the law requires commercial entities, including social media platforms, "that knowingly and intentionally publish or distribute material on an Internet website... more than one-third of which is sexual material harmful to minors" to age-gate...