Amit Priyavadan Mehta

The case involved Lluridia Ocampo Cambrai, a Mexican national in removal proceedings, who sought a preliminary injunction from the district court. She asked the court to declare that her U.S.-citizen son’s age would be frozen as of March 20, 2026—the date an immigration judge found she had shown the required “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” but reserved decision due to the annual statutory cap on cancellation-of-removal grants—and to bar any later denial of her application once her son turned 21 in July 2026. The court denied the motion. It held that it lacked jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(9), which requires claims arising from removal proceedings and involving statutory interpretation to be brought only through a petition for review of a final removal order in the courts of appeals, not in district court before proceedings conclude. The court rejected arguments that the claim was collateral or that relief would be permanently lost without immediate intervention, noting that appellate courts review such legal questions de novo.

immigrationprocedure

U.S. citizen Miad Ghaffari Ajrabadi and his Iranian wife Fahimeh Mohajeri sued Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other federal officials, seeking to compel adjudication of her immigrant visa application, which a consular officer had refused under INA § 221(g) after an April 2024 interview at the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan and placed in administrative processing with no further action for roughly 26 months. Plaintiffs alleged unreasonable delay under the Administrative Procedure Act and requested mandamus relief to force a decision within 30 days. The district court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss, holding that the complaint failed to state a plausible claim of unreasonable delay. Applying the six TRAC factors, the court found the first two (rule of reason and any statutory timetable) favored the government because the delay fell well short of the multi-year periods typically deemed unreasonable in this district; the fourth factor (competing agency priorities) weighed strongly against relief because granting it would simply reorder the queue at other applicants’ expense; and the third and fifth factors (health and welfare interests) also favored defendants despite the hardship of family separation. The mandamus claim was dismissed because the APA provided an adequate alternative remedy.

immigration

This FOIA case arose when America First Legal Foundation sued the CDC to obtain records of its communications with social media companies about identifying and flagging COVID-19 or vaccine-related misinformation or disinformation. After the CDC released most documents but withheld portions under Exemptions 4 (confidential commercial information) and 5 (deliberative process privilege), the court granted in part and denied in part the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment. The court upheld the Exemption 5 withholdings of meeting agendas and summaries because they were predecisional and deliberative, and rejected the plaintiff’s argument that alleged government misconduct could overcome the privilege. It also upheld the Exemption 4 withholdings of BrandLift materials from Meta, finding them commercial, customarily kept confidential, and subject to foreseeable competitive harm if released. However, the court ordered disclosure of the CrowdTangle records, ruling that they were not commercial in nature, not shown to be sufficiently confidential, and thus did not qualify for protection under Exemption 4.

federal powerhealthcarefree speechprocedure

The case concerned whether the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Program Statement 5100.08, which applies a distinct criminal-history scoring method to D.C. Code offenders housed in BOP facilities, violates the Administrative Procedure Act. Plaintiff Artavious Love, a D.C. Code offender, sued on behalf of himself and a proposed class, alleging that the scoring system—which counts many prior convictions excluded under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines—arbitrarily produces higher security-point totals and more restrictive placements than the method used for most federal offenders. The court certified the class of present and future D.C. Code offenders, finding the named plaintiff’s individual claim inherently transitory and therefore subject to relation-back, and granted the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment while denying the defendants’ cross-motion. It held that the scoring rules were arbitrary and capricious under the APA because they lacked any reasoned explanation for departing from the Guidelines’ exclusions and produced systematically unequal results without statutory authorization. The court did not reach the equal-protection claim.

criminal lawfederal powercivil rightsprocedure

This FOIA case arose when America First Legal Foundation sued the CDC to obtain records of its communications with social media companies about identifying and flagging COVID-19 or vaccine-related misinformation or disinformation. After the CDC released most documents but withheld portions under Exemptions 4 (confidential commercial information) and 5 (deliberative process privilege), the court granted in part and denied in part the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment. The court upheld the Exemption 5 withholdings of meeting agendas and summaries because they were predecisional and deliberative, and rejected the plaintiff’s argument that alleged government misconduct could overcome the privilege. It also upheld the Exemption 4 withholdings of BrandLift materials from Meta, finding them commercial, customarily kept confidential, and subject to foreseeable competitive harm if released. However, the court ordered disclosure of the CrowdTangle records, ruling that they were not commercial in nature, not shown to be sufficiently confidential, and thus did not qualify for protection under Exemption 4.

federal powerhealthcarefree speechprocedure

The case involves multiple consolidated lawsuits by plaintiffs (including Rep. Barbara Lee and others) against former President Donald Trump and various co-defendants, alleging claims under federal and D.C. law arising from events leading up to and including January 6, 2021. After the court largely denied Trump's motion for summary judgment on official-acts immunity and rejected the government's request to substitute itself as defendant on D.C. claims, Trump and the United States appealed those rulings and sought a full stay of all proceedings pending review. The court granted a complete stay of proceedings in six cases where Trump is the sole defendant, stayed only discovery as to Trump in the Smith case while allowing other discovery and matters to proceed, and stayed all proceedings in the Lee case. It reasoned that consolidated cases retain separate identities under Hall v. Hall, that official-acts immunity protects against the burdens of litigation (requiring a stay where Trump alone is sued), and that Griggs v. Provident Consumer Discount Co. limits any broader stay to only those aspects of multi-defendant cases directly involved in the appeal, with discretionary stay factors not supporting a full pause in Smith.

electionscivil rightsfederal powerprocedure

This case involves claims by 12 family members of U.S. servicemembers killed in seven attacks in Iraq, which the court previously found were supported by Iran, seeking solatium damages under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act for the emotional harm, grief, and loss of society caused by the deaths. The court had appointed a Special Master to evaluate the evidence of the plaintiffs’ injuries and recommend damages consistent with precedents such as Heiser, Valore, and Spencer. The court adopted the Special Master’s recommendations in full, awarding the claimed amounts—$8 million to each widow, $5 million to each parent or child, and $2.5 million to the sibling—plus punitive damages equal to twice the compensatory awards. The decision rested on findings that all plaintiffs satisfied the FSIA’s nationality and family-relationship requirements and on the documented evidence of their severe mental anguish and lasting trauma.

torts & liability

This case is a breach of contract dispute in which Grassroots Analytics sought to recover unpaid fees for text-messaging fundraising services provided to Phil Ehr’s congressional campaign. The Phil Ehr for Congress Campaign Committee originally sued Grassroots for rescission or damages, while Grassroots counterclaimed against the Campaign and Ehr individually for breach of contract (or unjust enrichment) and moved for summary judgment, including on an alter ego theory to hold Ehr personally liable. The court granted summary judgment to Grassroots on its breach of contract claim against the Campaign and dismissed the Campaign’s claims, after the Campaign conceded the motion, but denied summary judgment on the unjust enrichment claim and on holding Ehr individually liable. It reasoned that unjust enrichment is unavailable where a contract governs the parties’ relationship, and that genuine disputes of material fact remain as to whether Ehr dominated the Campaign to negate its separate identity, making alter ego liability a jury question based on evidence such as Ehr’s declaration regarding his control and use of funds. The court scheduled further proceedings on the remaining claims against Ehr.

business & regulatoryelectionsprocedure

In Von Batten v. Grey Team, Inc., a D.C. resident sued a Florida veterans’ nonprofit and two of its representatives after pledging $100,000 at a Mar-a-Lago event he believed supported Donald Trump or a related PAC; when he refused to pay, the defendants sent voicemails and emails threatening to notify Mar-a-Lago and his business contacts, and later sued him in Florida state court to collect the pledge. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss on forum non conveniens grounds, holding that the plaintiff’s choice of his home forum was entitled to deference and that the balance of private and public interest factors did not strongly favor Florida. The court dismissed the extortion/attempted extortion claim because D.C. law recognizes no such cause of action, dismissed the IIED claim for failure to allege conduct sufficiently outrageous, and dismissed the tortious interference claim because the plaintiff alleged only unfulfilled threats and no actual injury to a business relationship. It allowed the fraud claim to proceed against Grey Team alone, finding the complaint plausibly alleged that the event’s purpose had been misrepresented through use of the “America First” slogan and related imagery, inducing the pledge.

proceduretorts & liabilityelectionscriminal law

In Healthy Gulf v. Haaland, environmental groups challenged the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s approval of Lease Sale 259, a large offshore oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico, arguing that its 2023 environmental impact statement violated the National Environmental Policy Act by inadequately analyzing greenhouse gas emissions and risks to the endangered Rice’s whale. After the court ruled the EIS was deficient on those points, the parties briefed remedies, and BOEM later issued a new 2025 EIS and 2026 Record of Decision that reaffirmed the original sale using updated data. The court held the case was not moot because the new decision reaffirmed rather than replaced the 2023 approval and BOEM continued to rely on the original EIS for post-lease actions. It then ordered remand without vacatur, reasoning that the agency’s updated analyses showed a strong likelihood it could reach the same result on remand and that vacating the leases or EIS would cause significant economic disruption to lessees who had invested hundreds of millions of dollars.

environmentbusiness & regulatoryprocedure

Blasket Renewable Investments, LLC sought to enforce a €22 million ICSID arbitral award against Spain arising from Spain’s withdrawal of renewable energy subsidies that an ICSID tribunal found breached the Energy Charter Treaty. Spain moved to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction under the FSIA or to stay the case, arguing that EU law voids any arbitration agreement between EU member states and their investors, so neither the ICSID tribunal nor U.S. courts had authority over the dispute. The court denied the motion. Relying on the D.C. Circuit’s decision in NextEra Energy, it held that the FSIA’s arbitration exception confers subject-matter jurisdiction and that forum non conveniens is unavailable; it further ruled that the award is entitled to full faith and credit under 22 U.S.C. § 1650a because the tribunal’s jurisdictional ruling had already been litigated and decided.

business & regulatoryenvironmentfederal powerprocedure

In Ledwidge v. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Joint Official Liquidators of the Cayman Islands Branch of the failed Silicon Valley Bank sued the FDIC and its officials, alleging that the agency improperly denied “insured deposit” status to the branch’s depositors after SVB’s collapse and treated them as general unsecured creditors. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted the defendants’ motions to dismiss, ruling that the plaintiffs lacked standing to assert the claims. The court held that the FDIC, as receiver, succeeded to “all rights, titles, powers, and privileges” of SVB under 12 U.S.C. § 1821(d)(2)(A)(i), so only the FDIC could sue on the bank’s behalf. It further determined that the liquidators were collaterally estopped from claiming agency standing on behalf of depositors, as prior decisions by the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York and the Northern District of California had already rejected that theory under Cayman law, and that the liquidators also lacked prudential standing because many depositors had already filed claims themselves.

business & regulatoryfederal powerprocedure

This case is part of a larger action under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act’s terrorism exception in which U.S. servicemembers and their families sued Iran for materially supporting insurgent attacks in Iraq, including the December 2005 bombing that injured 2LT Terrance Peterson, III. The court’s memorandum addresses only the solatium claim of Peterson’s mother, Petra Spialek, whose eligibility as a U.S. national and immediate family member had not been established in an earlier liability ruling. The court adopted the Special Master’s unopposed Report and Recommendation, awarding Spialek $2.5 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages. It reached this result by applying the damages framework from Estate of Heiser and related cases, which sets a $2.5 million baseline for a parent of a surviving victim and permits punitive damages equal to twice the compensatory award, after confirming through passport evidence and detailed testimony that Spialek suffered severe emotional distress from her son’s injuries and prolonged recovery.

federal powertorts & liability

Constance Freeman, a pro se plaintiff employed by the D.C. Department of Human Services, filed suit alleging claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act and D.C. Human Rights Act for disability discrimination, retaliation, and violations of the D.C. Protecting Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. The defendant moved to dismiss the complaint in full; after Freeman did not respond despite notice, the court treated the motion as conceded and also examined the merits, granting dismissal without prejudice. The court reasoned that the complaint contained only a bare allegation of a “mental disability” without facts showing a substantial limitation on major life activities, failed to allege any adverse action tied to protected activity for retaliation, and nowhere claimed denial of a pregnancy-related accommodation.

labor & employmentcivil rightsprocedure

This case involves claims by three U.S. military servicemembers injured in explosively formed penetrator attacks in Iraq, who alleged that Iran provided material support to the responsible insurgents under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The court had previously entered default judgments on liability for these and other attacks. Here, the court adopted the Special Master’s recommendations for compensatory damages—covering non-economic harms such as pain and suffering for all three plaintiffs, plus economic losses for two of them based on expert forensic reports—and punitive damages calculated at twice the compensatory amount. The court found the Special Master’s methodology consistent with FSIA precedents like Heiser and Valore, the expert assumptions reasonable, and no objections filed. It therefore entered the recommended awards totaling over $57 million across the three plaintiffs.

torts & liability

This case involves claims by three U.S. military servicemembers injured in explosively formed penetrator attacks in Iraq, who alleged that Iran provided material support to the responsible insurgents under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The court had previously entered default judgments on liability for these and other attacks. Here, the court adopted the Special Master’s recommendations for compensatory damages—covering non-economic harms such as pain and suffering for all three plaintiffs, plus economic losses for two of them based on expert forensic reports—and punitive damages calculated at twice the compensatory amount. The court found the Special Master’s methodology consistent with FSIA precedents like Heiser and Valore, the expert assumptions reasonable, and no objections filed. It therefore entered the recommended awards totaling over $57 million across the three plaintiffs.

torts & liability

In the antitrust case United States v. Google LLC, the district court had previously found Google liable for unlawfully maintaining monopolies in general search services and search text advertising, leading to a Final Judgment that barred exclusive distribution deals and required Google to share its search index and user data while syndicating results and ads to qualified competitors. Google appealed the judgment and moved for a partial stay of the data-sharing and syndication remedies pending appeal. The court denied the motion without prejudice. It held that a stay requires a showing of irreparable harm that is certain, great, and imminent, but Google could not meet this standard because implementation of those remedies remains months away and depends on unresolved details such as competitor qualifications, security safeguards, and license terms. The court therefore concluded that it was premature to assess the harm and invited Google to renew its request once those specifics become clearer.

business & regulatoryprocedure

In Lee v. Islamic Republic of Iran, U.S. servicemembers, contractors, their estates, and family members sued Iran under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act for deaths and injuries from 17 insurgent attacks in Iraq between 2004 and 2008, alleging Iran provided material support through proxies using explosively formed penetrators. The court entered default judgment against Iran after it failed to defend the case, finding it liable for the claims of the two directly injured plaintiffs and the 12 estates of those killed, while deferring decision on the 68 family members’ emotional distress claims due to lack of evidence that they are U.S. nationals. The ruling relied on judicial notice of prior findings in related cases establishing Iran’s ties to Iraqi proxies and the nature of the attacks, combined with evidence linking each of the 17 incidents to Iran, satisfying the FSIA’s requirements for subject-matter jurisdiction and liability under 28 U.S.C. § 1605A(c). The court applied the default-judgment standard requiring plaintiffs to present satisfactory evidence, which it deemed met for the victims’ claims but incomplete for the family members.

torts & liabilityfederal powerprocedure

In Rosemary Love v. United States of America, the plaintiff sued the federal government and the District of Columbia after falling on a defective sidewalk in the 1900 block of Independence Avenue SW, alleging that both defendants had a duty of care due to their control over the area and prior repair attempts. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted the District’s motion to dismiss it from the case. The court held that the location falls within the National Capital Service Area under 40 U.S.C. §§ 8501–8502, giving the federal government exclusive control over the street and sidewalks, so the District owed no duty. It rejected the plaintiff’s claims that the District controlled the sidewalk or was responsible for a temporary asphalt patch, finding those assertions to be legal conclusions or speculative facts not entitled to assumption of truth under Twombly. The dismissal was without prejudice to rejoining the District if discovery later supports it.

federal powerproceduretorts & liability

In this case, plaintiff Jaymie Gustafson sued the Washington Nationals Baseball Club under the D.C. Consumer Protection Procedures Act, alleging that the team falsely advertised ticket prices by quoting round numbers at the stadium box office and online without disclosing additional “junk fees” such as service and processing charges, which she only discovered after purchase. The National Consumers League, which had filed a parallel suit in D.C. Superior Court, moved to intervene and stay the federal action, while the Nationals moved to compel arbitration under its online terms or dismiss the complaint. The court allowed the League to intervene but denied a stay, denied the motion to compel arbitration, and dismissed the request for injunctive relief for lack of standing while permitting the damages claim to proceed. It reasoned that Gustafson’s claim arose from an in-person box-office transaction not covered by the online arbitration clause, that she is master of her complaint for arbitrability purposes, and that the defendant had already discontinued the challenged fees.

business & regulatoryprocedure