Articles Tagged: Ninth Circuit
A federal appeals court has revived the jury’s antitrust verdict in the long-running NFL “Sunday Ticket” litigation, putting one of the most closely watched sports-antitrust battles back on center stage. The decision restores significant leverage to the subscriber plaintiffs after the trial court had set aside the jury’s damages award, and it reopens the prospect of massive exposure tied to the league’s out-of-market game package.
The litigation challenges the NFL’s distribution model for Sunday Ticket, alleging that the league and its member teams unlawfully restricted competition and inflated prices for consumers and commercial subscribers.
The Ninth Circuit’s October 27, 2026 agency opinion in docket 25-2445 is a useful reminder that appellate review of agency action turns less on whether the court agrees with the agency’s policy choice and more on whether the agency adequately explained itself, followed the governing statute, and built a defensible administrative record.
Although the case arises in the agency-review posture rather than ordinary civil litigation, the opinion has practical significance for lawyers handling petitions for review, regulated entities challenging federal action, and agency counsel defending administrative decisions.
The Ninth Circuit has declined to immediately stop California from counting roughly 20,000 disputed ballots that the U.S. Department of Justice contends may have been cast by noncitizens, preserving the status quo while the underlying dispute continues in federal district court. The ruling does not resolve the merits, but it is a significant procedural win for California election officials at a critical moment just days before the November 3 election.
At this stage, the appellate court’s refusal to grant emergency relief is legally important for what it signals about timing, remedies, and judicial reluctance to disrupt election administration on the eve of voting.
The Justice Department has sued California election officials in a closely watched pre-election dispute over voter-roll maintenance and mail-ballot counting.
The Ninth Circuit has directed a lower court to preliminarily block California’s “No Vigilantes Act,” concluding the federal government is likely to succeed on its claim that the state law impermissibly regulates federal officers. The ruling is an important early win for the United States in a closely watched dispute over the limits of state power when legislating around federal immigration enforcement.
The statute would have required federal agents to display visible identification while carrying out their duties.
A federal judge’s decision invalidating President Donald Trump’s removal of the court-appointed U.S. attorney in Seattle is continuing to ripple through the legal industry, not just because it affects a high-profile Justice Department post, but because it tees up a deeper constitutional dispute over who controls interim federal prosecutors.
The underlying case, Rogoff v. Trump et al, centers on Roger Rogoff and the Western District of Washington U.S. attorney position.
A California federal judge has rejected CashCall’s latest bid to unwind a $157 million Consumer Financial Protection Bureau judgment, preserving a major consumer-finance enforcement result in a case that has been litigated for years. The decision is significant not only because of the size of the judgment, but also because the court reportedly took a dim view of the company’s repeated efforts to avoid finality.
The dispute arises from the CFPB’s long-running challenge to a lending program tied to tribal entities, where CashCall was accused of using a tribal-lending structure to make high-interest loans that violated state usury and consumer-protection laws.
A newly filed motion in the Ninth Circuit, No. 3 Motion to Dismiss in case 26-5041, puts a familiar but consequential appellate issue front and center: whether the appeal should proceed at all. Appellees Joseph Taylor, Mick Cleary, Jennifer [as listed on the docket], and others filed the motion on August 7, 2026, asking the court to terminate the appeal at the threshold rather than reach the merits.
At this stage, a motion to dismiss in the court of appeals typically targets a defect in appellate jurisdiction or a serious procedural flaw.
The Ninth Circuit’s August 4, 2026 opinion in No. 61 OPINION (Milan D), Docket No. 26-1444, is worth watching for practitioners handling federal appeals in the circuit. Based on the available case information, the decision appears to address issues significant enough to merit a published opinion, which usually signals the panel intended to provide guidance beyond the immediate parties.
Although the caption information currently available is limited, the practical takeaway for litigators is straightforward: when the Ninth Circuit issues a precedential opinion rather than a memorandum disposition, counsel should assume the court is clarifying doctrine, refining a procedural standard, or resolving uncertainty that may recur in district courts.
A federal appeals court has handed workers a notable win in the long-running fight over the reach of mandatory arbitration, ruling that Tesla’s California yard hostlers fall outside the Federal Arbitration Act. The decision allows their wage-and-hour claims to continue in state court rather than being diverted into private arbitration.
The key issue was whether these workers fit within the FAA’s transportation-worker exemption.
Meta Platforms has filed an emergency motion in the Ninth Circuit, accompanied by a Circuit Rule 27-3 certificate, signaling that the company is asking the court for expedited intervention rather than waiting for the ordinary appellate schedule.
Meta Platforms has asked the Ninth Circuit to halt proceedings in the trial court while its appeal moves forward, a procedural step that can have outsized strategic consequences in high-stakes litigation. The filing—“Motion to Stay Underlying Proceedings”—signals that Meta believes continued district court activity would undermine the value of the appellate process or impose burdens that cannot be effectively remedied later.
At a basic level, a stay motion asks the appellate court to preserve the status quo.
A June 26, 2026 filing in the Ninth Circuit puts a threshold issue front and center: whether this case should remain in the court of appeals at all. Respondent Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has filed a motion to dismiss in No. 25-8059, asking the court to terminate the proceeding before the merits are reached.
Although the docket entry provides only the motion’s caption-level detail, the filing itself is notable because motions to dismiss at the appellate level often turn on core gatekeeping doctrines that can decide a case without any substantive ruling on the challenged agency action.
A federal judge in the Eastern District of California has blocked Nexstar Media Group’s proposed acquisition of Tegna while antitrust litigation proceeds, handing opponents of the deal an important early win and underscoring how merger challenges can survive even after federal regulators decline to stop a transaction.
Judge Troy Nunley found that the challengers were likely to succeed, a significant conclusion at the preliminary injunction stage.
The Ninth Circuit has handed Alaska regulators a significant win in a dispute over access to oil-and-gas well information, ruling that federal law does not preempt an Alaska statute requiring disclosure of certain ConocoPhillips well data. The decision reverses a lower-court ruling that had allowed the records to remain confidential and marks an important appellate development at the intersection of energy regulation, public-records obligations, and preemption doctrine.
At a high level, the fight centered on whether federal statutes and regulations governing energy-related information displaced Alaska’s disclosure regime.

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