DIFTCL: Federal Narrative Summaries

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment on the pleadings dismissing the lawsuit because the plaintiff, a Louisiana limited liability company dissolved by affidavit prior to filing suit, lacked legal capacity to sue under Texas law. The court applied Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 17(b)(3), which d...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 Docket: 2:22-cr-00053-SPC-NPM-1 The eleventh-circuit affirmed the defendant’s convictions for possession and distribution of child pornography, rejecting challenges based on the Fourth Amendment, Double Jeopardy Clause, sufficiency of evidence, evidentiary rulings regarding graphic images, exclusion of emails, a...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Officer Shane Privette, holding that he is entitled to qualified immunity. The court resolved the appeal solely on the second prong of the qualified immunity analysis, determining whether the right alleged was “clearly estab...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of motions to intervene and dismissed the remaining claims for want of appellate jurisdiction. The court held that intervention was futile because 8 U.S.C. § 1623(a) expressly preempts Texas Education Code §§ 54.051(m) and 54.052(a), which authorize illegal ali...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 The First Circuit affirmed the district court’s order suppressing evidence of child pornography discovered on a defendant’s iPhone 13 Pro Max. The court held that the government failed to meet its heavy burden of demonstrating that the agents acted with objective good faith under the good faith exception to t...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 The Fifth Circuit granted the Federal Public Defender’s motion to withdraw and dismissed the appeal. The court based its decision on an *Anders v. California* review, in which it concurred with counsel’s assessment that the appeal presented no nonfrivolous issues for appellate review after examining the brief...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 The Fifth Circuit affirmed the 78-month sentence imposed on Erlin Alexander Castro-Medina for illegal reentry into the United States. The court held that Castro-Medina failed to demonstrate plain error regarding his challenges to the adequacy of the district court’s reasons, the substantive reasonableness of the se...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of defendants SI Group, Bulk Solutions, and Brenner Tank Services in a Texas premises-liability and products-liability action arising from an accident where a hot water tanker trailer tipped over on gravel, scalding the plaintiff. Th...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 The Fifth Circuit granted the appointed attorney’s motion to withdraw and dismissed the appeal after reviewing a brief filed in accordance with *Anders v. California* and *United States v. Flores*. The court concurred with counsel’s assessment that the record contained no nonfrivolous issues for appellate rev...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendants, dismissing Monnie Villarreal’s § 1983 claims for failure to exhaust administrative remedies as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA). The court held that Villarreal qualified as a “prisone...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment in favor of the EEOC and Sarah Budd, rejecting SkyWest Airlines’ appeal seeking a new trial or judgment as a matter of law. The court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting text messages into evidence under Federal Rule o...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of Melvin Mauricio Valencia Gil’s motion to dismiss his federal indictment for illegal reentry under 8 U.S.C. § 1326. The court held that Valencia failed to exhaust his administrative remedies as required by 8 U.S.C. § 1326(d) before collaterally attack...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 Docket: 1:25-cr-00032-TFM-N-1 The eleventh-circuit affirmed the 96-month sentence and three-year term of supervised release imposed on Jabari Stots for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. The court held that Stots’s arguments regarding procedural error in applying an inapplicable Sentencing Guidelines...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of a petition filed under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction seeking the return of the appellant’s son, M.A.S., from the United States to Mexico. The court held that the respondent mother met her burden of proving b...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 Docket: 2:22-cr-00053-SPC-NPM-1 The eleventh-circuit affirmed the defendant’s convictions for possession and distribution of child pornography, ruling that Google’s use of an automated “hash-value matching” protocol to identify illicit files constituted a valid private search under the Fourth A...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 The fifth-circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment excluding two of the plaintiff’s experts and granting summary judgment to the defendant. The court held that there was no error in the district court’s well-reasoned decisions regarding the admissibility of the expert testimony and the propriety o...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of Matthew Darnell Pittman’s motion for compassionate release under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A). The court applied an abuse of discretion standard of review, requiring that a district court must determine whether extraordinary and compelling reasons warra...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 The fourth-circuit affirmed the district court’s order denying defendant Brandon Lashon Ingram’s second motion for compassionate release under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A). The court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that, even assuming Ingram established extraordinary and...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 The Fourth Circuit dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction because the district court’s order denying a motion for a writ of mandamus and partially granting a motion to dismiss was neither a final order nor an appealable interlocutory or collateral order under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1291 and 1292, as well as Federal R...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment for prison officials in a civil rights action brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 by the estate of an inmate murdered by another prisoner. The court held that the officers did not violate the Eighth Amendment because the plaintiff failed to esta...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 Docket: 5:23-CV-04044-JWB) The Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the State of Kansas in a Title VII employment discrimination case brought by Terri Thurman, a former court clerk. The court held that Ms. Thurman failed to establish a genuine dispute of material fact regarding h...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 The Eleventh Circuit denied the petition for review filed by Fanis Arelly Yanes Canales and her son, upholding the Board of Immigration Appeals’ final order affirming the denial of asylum and withholding of removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act. The court applied the substantial evidence standard to...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 Docket: 2:23-CV-02009-DDC-ADM) The Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of several postjudgment motions filed by Christopher VanHorn, including a motion for relief from judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b) and various related procedural motions. The court reviewed the denial of the Rul...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 Docket: 3:24-cr-08016-SMB-1 The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s sentence of twenty-five years in federal prison followed by a lifetime term of supervised release imposed on Moroni Johnson for conspiracy to commit transportation of a minor for criminal sexual activity. The court addressed two primary arg...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Filed: 2026-07-09 The Fifth Circuit denied the petition for rehearing en banc regarding an interlocutory appeal in a civil rights action alleging First Amendment violations. The court treated the petition as a panel rehearing request and denied it because, upon polling the judges, a majority did not vote in favor of rehearing. Consequentl...