Avalon Zoppo

1 week ago | law.com | Avalon Zoppo

Happy Friday, and welcome to another roundup of the week’s news about the judiciary. This week, we’re taking a look at part of my interview with retired Third Circuit Judge Kent Jordan, who talked a bit about the timing of his retirement announcement last May. As always, please reach out to me at [email protected] with any tips or feedback and follow me on X at @AvalonZoppo or Bluesky at @avalonzoppo.bsky.social.

2 weeks ago | law.com | Avalon Zoppo

Judges appointed by President Donald Trump are more likely to pen dissents to denials of en banc rehearing, or DDRs, than their Democratic- and other Republican-appointed colleagues, a new study says. William & Mary Law School professors Neal Devins and Allison Orr Larsen argue a growing partisan gap in who writes dissents to denials of rehearings may be due to judges using heated separate writings to “seek celebrity,” which can ultimately damage circuit collegiality.

2 weeks ago | law.com | Avalon Zoppo

Two judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit had sharp words for the Department of Justice in upholding an order on Monday that required it to return a Maryland man deported to an El Salvador prison, with one panel member saying "the government screwed up.” In the rapidly moving case, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. on Monday afternoon paused the lower court order that required Abrego Garcia’s return by Monday at midnight.

2 weeks ago | law.com | Avalon Zoppo

U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Judge Neomi Rao knocked her colleagues Monday for halting President Donald Trump’s firings of two independent agency members. The Trump-appointee said a majority of active D.C. Circuit judges were wrong to revive a lower court judge’s order reinstating National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox and Merit Systems Protection Board member Cathy Harris—an injunction on the president that Rao dubbed a “judicially imposed fiction.”

2 weeks ago | law.com | Avalon Zoppo

A Boston federal judge ruled Friday that a case brought by a Tufts University student detained by U.S. immigration officials be transferred to a federal court in Vermont and not Louisiana, where the government is confining her. U.S. District Judge Denise Casper noted in her ruling that Turkish post-doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk’s legal team provided affidavits from New England immigration attorneys who said moving Ozturk to a Louisiana detention center was “far from routine.”