Short Circuit: An inexhaustive weekly compendium of rulings from the federal courts of appeal

Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature written by a bunch of people at the Institute for Justice.

Neat: IJ's own Dan Alban is a featured guest on the latest episode of the Collateral Damage podcast, talking the early history of civil forfeiture.

New on the Short Circuit podcast: More civil forfeiture fun. Feds seize over half a million big ones, hold on to it for three years, never give a reason, and give it back without explanation.

1. New Jersey allows doctors (in certain circumstances) to assist in the suicide of terminally ill patients—but only if those patients live in New Jersey. Unconstitutional? Third Circuit: Even if there were a fundamental right to assisted suicide (which we doubt), New Jersey has a pretty strong interest in preventing New Jerseyans from killing Pennsylvanians in violation of Pennsylvania law.
2. Philly police are generally not to engage in vehicle pursuits because of the high risk to innocent bystanders. So are these two officers who chased a drug dealer, who then crashed and killed a woman, liable under Section 1983? Third Circuit: Nope. Might have been a violation of dept. policy, but there's no constitutional violation, and, even if there was, qualified immunity.
3. Nonprofit hires woman, but she quits after a few days, asks for pay for that time; they refuse, and things get worse from there. But! They don't turn off her email access to a board member's email. She and a friend comb through the account, download internal documents, and then ask for a lot of money. Federal crime? Third Circuit: Not until they actually revoked her access. Dissent: That's not what the statute says.
4. Hoi polloi (the "hoi" means "the," by the way, making "the 'hoi polloi'" as much a blundering misstep as "ATM machine") will doubtless relish the culture-war aspects of this 2-1 Fifth Circuit decision about ::deep breath:: whether a woman who photographed a transgender politician hand-washing in the women's restroom of the Texas State Capitol has shown a likelihood of success in her First Amendment challenge to Texas's no-snapping-pics-in-bathrooms statute. For the more refined palate? Judge Oldham's "history of federal injunctions against state court proceedings, both before and after Younger."
5. Two versions of a fatal altercation in Lake Worth, Tex. One: Police officer wildly shot at a fleeing suspect, nearly hitting another officer, only to discover after killing the suspect (by shooting him in the back) that he had a gun. The other: Officers knew suspect had been involved in drive-by shootings; had fled police in a different, 120-mph car chase; and was holding a gun with his finger on the trigger. Fifth Circuit (unpublished, despite featuring three opinions, one a dissent): "The accuracy of these competing narratives is precisely the kind of question that cannot be resolved at summary judgment." Qualified immunity reversed; to a jury this must go.
6. The Video Privacy Protection Act, passed after a newspaper published Robert Bork's video-rental history, is having a bit of a renaissance (and circuit split) these days. Woman: It bars the local movie theater from tracking my movie-trailer views on its website and sharing with Meta for targeted ads. Eighth Circuit: It does not. Movie theaters are not similar to video cassettes, so they aren't covered by the statute.
7. Allegation: In violation of dept. policy, which forbids chasing misdemeanor suspects, St. Louis County, Mo. officers chase red-light runner and then ram his car. He crashes and dies. The officers leave without providing aid and falsely report a single-car crash. Eighth Circuit: Qualified immunity.
8. A nonprofit publishes The Habeas Citebook and sends to thousands of prisoners across the country. Washington state officials decline to deliver the book to inmates, citing a concern about "paper checking," which is when inmates demand to see peers' papers to determine if they are sex offenders, if they've ever snitched, etc. Refusals result in violence. The citebook doesn't have anyone's papers, however, and officials reverse course—but still take nearly 500 days to deliver the books. District court: No harm, no foul. Ninth Circuit (2023): Try again. District court: Gov't wins again. Ninth Circuit (2025): Try again. Qualified immunity means no damages for some of the claims, but there are constitutional violations here giving rise to injunctive relief.
9. Oregon man facilitates the sale of a Russian machine gun to man he does not realize is an undercover federal agent. He's convicted of illegally transferring a machine gun. Twist! Although federal law prohibits the transfer of machine guns, that prohibition does not apply to "a transfer to . . . the United States or any department or agency thereof." Is he off the hook? Ninth Circuit (over a dissent): No. "Simply put, context matters, which is why we still have human beings interpret statutes, rather than MU-TH-UR 6000, Skynet, or Hal 9000 donning black robes."
10. App developers don't want to pay Apple's 30 percent commission on in-app purchases, and after Epic Games won an injunction letting developers steer users to outside payment options, Apple "complied" by hiding links to those options, scaring users with a warning screen, and imposing a 27 percent commission on outside transactions that made steering economically pointless. Ninth Circuit: The district court was right to find Apple in contempt; most of its sanctions stay in place and the injunction stands. However, permanently banning Apple from ever collecting any commission on external purchases was a smidge enthusiastic, so that part goes back for a do-over.
11. Oklahoma man has a friendly relationship with his next-door neighbor until one day he shoots the neighbor 10 times, alleging that the neighbor molested the man's daughter. The neighbor was innocent and the shooter was suffering paranoid delusions and psychosis, probably because of the extremely high doses of Adderall he was prescribed. He raises an involuntary intoxication defense but is convicted. Tenth Circuit: Unfortunately, the trial court's jury instruction on involuntary intoxication was erroneous. New trial.
12. Escambia County, Fla. officer fires into the driver's side window of a truck from eight feet away, killing man wanted for driving on a suspended license. Officer: I thought I was about to be run over, so good shoot. Eleventh Circuit: The district court should have granted qualified immunity, and we do so now. Dissent: The parties disagree on (among other things) whether the truck was even moving. To a jury this should have gone.
13. And in en banc news, the Third Circuit will reconsider its decision that various New Jersey restrictions on owning and carrying firearms comport with history and tradition and that a handful of other restrictions probably don't.
14. And in more en banc news, the Ninth Circuit will not reconsider its decision that a set of parents and nonprofits do not have standing to challenge Washington state's laws allowing teenagers to request treatment related to gender dysphoria without parental consent. Dissental: "Is our court's position really that, in such a hypothetical, a parent must first have a dead child before it could sue?"
15. And in further en banc news, the Ninth Circuit will reconsider the question of the mobilization of national guard troops for work in Portland, Ore. Statement in Support 1: Let's do this en banc, but when we do how about we look at the Domestic Violence Clause too? Statement 2: Statement 1 is wrong.

Earth-shattering victory! Friends, IJ has been fighting the good fight on rental inspections—that is, code-enforcement officials forcing their way into people's homes without real warrants based on individualized suspicion—for decades. So we're thrilled to announce that a Pennsylvania appeals court issued a first-of-its-kind ruling this week, holding that the state's constitution indeed provides more protection than the federal Constitution against such searches. We filed the case nearly a decade ago, and along the way discovered that yes, inspectors gossip about the incredibly private things they see; that yes, the inspections are a backdoor for law enforcement; that yes, renters find it extremely demeaning that they must open their doors when homeowners do not; and that yes, the public health and safety justifications for such regimes cannot withstand any scrutiny. Click here to learn more. And click here for a lovingly crafted podcast episode on what went wrong with the federal Constitution.

The post Short Circuit: An inexhaustive weekly compendium of rulings from the federal courts of appeal appeared first on Reason.com.