in the courts

A ghost gun company has been ordered to pay more than $100 million in the death of a Kentucky teenager who had purchased the company’s pistol-building kit online.

The verdict — believed to be the largest ever against a gun dealer — was awarded by a jury Wednesday following a trial focused on whether the vendor, Husky Armory LLC, skirted federal regulations barring the sale of the gun-assembly kits to those under 21.

The pro-voting plaintiffs argued that eliminating QVA in favor of requiring voters to show proof of citizenship led to at least 100 voters being turned away in last year’s municipal elections because they lacked proper documentation. 

But Elliott blasted New Hampshire officials for failing to track the effect of the new law on voter turnout.

A federal judge has barred the deportation of a witness in the fatal shooting of a Mexican homebuilder by federal immigration officers during a traffic stop in Houston.

Jose Trinidad Rojas Pliego was one of three passengers in a van driven by Lorenzo Araujo Salgado when Araujo Salgado was shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on July 7 while they were driving to work at a construction site.

Araujo Salgado’s killing sparked protests and calls for an independent investigation. Within the next week, a federal immigration officer in Maine fatally shot a Colombian man, and a Mexican man in Florida died after being hit by a truck while fleeing immigration officers.

The Trump administration cannot deny immigrants detained inside the United States a chance for release on bond, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

The 2-1 decision by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, with a judge appointed by President Donald Trump in the majority, deepened a split between federal appeals courts over the administration’s mandatory detention policy.

Four other appeals courts have also rejected it, while the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans and Eighth Circuit in St. Louis have sided with the Trump administration.

In a 14-page opinion, Judge Colleen Lawless reached the same conclusion as judges in 18 other federal districts and one appellate circuit who have ruled in nearly identical cases. She found that the Civil Rights Act of 1960 does not give the U.S. attorney general "general auditing power" to demand voter data.

U.S. District Judge Claria Horn Boom sided with Kentucky election officials Thursday as she dismissed a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit seeking private voter rolls, which include driver’s license and social security numbers.

It’s part of a broader losing streak for the DOJ, which has sued 30 states and Washington D.C. after they refused to hand over the sensitive voter data. Federal judges across the country have ruled against the lawsuits, saying that federal law doesn’t grant the administration unfettered access to state voter rolls.

In her Thursday opinion, Boom pointed to a recent 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling — under whose jurisdiction Kentucky falls — that came to the same conclusion in Michigan. It was the first appellate court to rule against President Donald Trump’s attempt to access private voter registration data; the DOJ has already asked the full appellate court to rehear the case.

In a 2-1 decision on the ballroom, the appeals court sided with historic preservationists who sued to stop construction of the massive structure, which has begun to rise above ground on the east side of the White House, according to the most recent aerial photos of the site. The court said it would stay its ruling for two weeks to give the administration time to appeal to the Supreme Court.

A South Carolina federal judge this week ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to resume distributing funds designed to address environmental and health challenges in underserved communities. 

In June, U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel voided the Trump administration’s termination of the $2.8 billion Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant Program. But the court ruling did not explicitly require the Environmental Protection Agency to resume distributing the block grants. 

Sullivan’s decision follows a ruling by US district judge Indira Talwani last week, in which the NAACP had also challenged the executive order. Talwani blocked the administration’s plan for mail-in voting across 23 states and the District of Columbia, which sued the administration to stop the proposed rule. The latest order appears to extend this injunction nationwide, as it is meant to enforce an agreement that bound the postal service as an agency until 2028.

In a blistering 23-page opinion Wednesday, District Court Judge Sparkle Sooknanan berated the federal government’s attorneys for failing to notify her about a related case in Florida. A federal judge in that litigation issued an order Tuesday demanding DHS allow Florida, Iowa, Indiana and Ohio to use SAVE again, saying the agency was bound by a November 2025 settlement agreement with the state.