Week in Review

IN THE NEWS

• The U.S. Supreme Court permitted the Trump Administration to enforce its ban on transgender individuals serving in the military, lifting a nationwide injunction previously issued by a federal judge who found the policy likely unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment. The Court’s unsigned decision allows the military to discharge current transgender service members and deny enlistment to transgender applicants while legal challenges proceed. President Trump reinstated the ban via executive order in January 2025, reversing the Biden-era policy that allowed transgender individuals to serve openly.
• The Trump Administration agreed to halt a funding freeze against Maine for the state’s treatment of transgender athletes, settling the lawsuit Maine filed against the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Maine filed the lawsuit after the Agriculture Secretary froze funds for children’s nutrition programs following a disagreement between President Trump and Maine Governor Janet Mills over the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports. Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey responded to the settlement, saying “it’s unfortunate that my office had to resort to federal court…but we are pleased that the lawsuit has now been resolved.”
• A federal judge blocked the Trump Administration from deporting Laotian, Vietnamese, and Filipino immigrants to Libya. Immigration activists filed an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order on behalf of these immigrants following reports of imminent deportation flights, citing concerns over the safety of deportees in Libya and the lack of due process. Judge Brian E. Murphy rejected the request for a new restraining order, instead affirming that such deportations “would clearly violate” an existing court order halting these removals until the affected individuals are given a meaningful opportunity to contest their deportation in court.
• A federal judge issued a compliance order requiring the Trump Administration to resume refugee admissions immediately for individuals protected by a prior injunction. The court rejected the government’s attempt to reinterpret a Ninth Circuit ruling that preserved refugee protections for about 12,000 individuals with confirmed travel plans as of January 20, 2025, finding the government’s reading “interpretive jiggery-pokery of the highest order.” Judge Jamal N. Whitehead ordered the Administration to restore refugee processing, funding, and resettlement services within strict deadlines. The order also imposed detailed weekly reporting requirements and warned that noncompliance could result in sanctions.
• The U.S. Department of Justice rescinded regulations adopted under President Joseph R. Biden in 2022 about obtaining information from members of the news media. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced in a memorandum that the Justice Department will no longer be precluded from “seeking records and compelling testimony from members of the news media in order to identify and punish the source of improper leaks,” and that members of the news media will be required to answer subpoenas. The rule is intended to balance “the free dissemination of ideas and information” with “effective law enforcement and the fair administration of justice” by returning to longstanding Justice Department practices.
• President Donald J. Trump issued an executive order intended to promote safe biological research by restricting funding for “gain-of-function” research—or experimentation with viruses and other pathogens to learn how illnesses “might become more transmissible or make people sicker.” The order, citing an alleged relationship between gain-of-function research and the COVID-19 pandemic, terminates federal funding for biological research in “countries of concern like China and Iran and in foreign nations deemed to have insufficient research oversight” and biological research “likely to cause another pandemic.” The order also pauses domestic research using infectious pathogens and toxins “until a safer, more enforceable, and transparent policy governing such research can be developed and implemented” and directs the Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop such a policy within 120 days.
• President Trump issued an executive order aiming to strengthen the United States’ pharmaceutical supply chain by reducing regulatory barriers that hinder domestic manufacturing. President Trump cited lengthy timeframes, complex regulations, and frequent inspections by the Federal and Drug Administration as hindrances to timely manufacturing. The order mandates the Secretary of Health and Human Services to review and eliminate “duplicative or unnecessary regulations,” enhance the timeliness of agency reviews, and “streamline and accelerate” the development of pharmaceutical manufacturing.
• The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposed a rule intended to strengthen wireless 911 location accuracy and to provide more actionable location information to first responders. The rule would increase the number of 911 calls for which wireless providers share dispatchable location information, including street addresses and apartment or room numbers, rather than merely location coordinates. The rule would also create “a centralized online complaint portal for location accuracy problems.” The FCC noted that “better location information from the outset of a 911 call” saves time and “translates to lives saved.”

WHAT WE’RE READING THIS WEEK

• In an article in Foreign Affairs, Anu Bradford, a Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organization at Columbia Law School, R. Daniel Kelemen, McCourt Chair at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, and Tommaso Pavone, assistant professor of European Politics at the University of Toronto, argued that the European Union is losing its place as a global regulatory leader. Bradford, Kelemen, and Pavone claim that two trends have led to this decline: hesitancy to enforce laws and the conclusion that regulations “stand in the way of economic growth.” They suggested that the second Trump Administration has worsened the issue with its “assault on the EU’s regulatory powers,” including the implementation of tariffs. Bradford, Kelemen, and Pavone argued that Europe should stand as a “beacon” of the rule of law by abandoning its deregulation agenda.
• In a recent Brookings Institution article, Mark MacCarthy, a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings, argued that current copyright law is insufficient to address the challenges that advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) technology pose to the future of creative work. MacCarthy contended that AI companies that have been sued for copyright infringement will likely prevail on a “fair use” defense because “their copying is necessary to create a new product—a generative AI model—that does not compete with the copied material.” MacCarthy also noted that, under current guidelines, AI-generated works are not eligible for copyright protection. MacCarthy argued that, to address this gap, copyright law should “recognize the humans who use sequences of prompts to generate original content” with AI technology as the true authors of AI-generated art.
• In an article in The Yale Law Journal, James D. Nelson, Vinson & Elkins Professor at the University of Houston Law Center, argued that courts need clearer guidance to adjudicate religious accommodation claims in the workplace following the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Groff v. DeJoy. Nelson observed that Groff dismantled the long-established “de minimis” standard for these claims, under which employers did not need to accommodate religion if it would incur anything more than trivial costs. According to Nelson, Groff has created confusion over how to balance religious liberty with the rights of third parties in the workplace. He proposed three core principles—“nondisparagement, reciprocity, and proportionality”—to help courts prevent religious accommodations from becoming tools of coercion or discrimination. Nelson urged judges, employers, and lawmakers to embrace these “disestablishment” values to ensure that religious accommodations do not come at the expense of coworkers’ dignity, fairness, or safety.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

• In an essay in The Regulatory Review, Scott Skinner-Thompson, an associate law professor at the University of Colorado Law School, discussed the harmful effects of efforts to regulate the livelihoods of transgender youth. Skinner-Thompson cited legislation concerning transgender youth’s access to school sports and medical care. Concerning medical care, he argued that these laws only ensure that children “continue to suffer” and are “denied access to established, sometimes lifesaving, care.” Skinner-Thompson urged that the sports bans are not only harmful but not logical, as “sex is a poor proxy for athletic ability.” He concluded that these categories of legislation indicate the necessity for dismantling systemic barriers to care for transgender individuals.