In 2021, Bennie J. Floyd received a 72-month sentence after pleading guilty to conspiring to distribute more than 500 grams of cocaine. He later moved under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2) for a reduction to 59 months, citing Amendment 821, which retroactively reduced the impact of “status points” on his criminal-history score and lowered his advisory Guidelines range to 57–71 months. The court found Floyd eligible for a reduction but denied the motion after weighing the factors in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). It concluded that Floyd’s extensive violent criminal history, repeated reoffending while on supervised release, and multiple serious disciplinary infractions while incarcerated continued to justify the original 72-month term to deter future crime and protect the public. The court determined that these circumstances outweighed any policy change reflected in the amended Guidelines.
In United States v. Allen, defendant Cole Tomas Allen faced charges including the attempted assassination of President Trump at a White House Correspondents’ Association dinner attended by senior officials. Allen moved to disqualify Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro (and potentially the entire U.S. Attorney’s Office) from handling the prosecution, arguing that their presence at the event, public statements afterward, and Pirro’s personal friendship with the President created actual or apparent conflicts of interest. The district court denied the motion. It held that neither official qualified as a legal “victim” of the charged offenses, that their media comments reflected ordinary prosecutorial interest rather than disqualifying bias, and that the friendship did not meet the standards for a personal or political conflict under 28 C.F.R. § 45.2 or Due Process precedents such as Marshall v. Jerrico and United States v. Heldt. The court emphasized that disqualification of prosecutors is a drastic remedy applied only in limited circumstances and is narrower than the impartiality rules governing judges.
This case involves Peter Schiff’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the IRS, in which he challenged the agency’s handling of two records requests. In an earlier ruling, the district court held that the IRS had conducted an adequate search for the first request but failed to justify withholding documents under FOIA exemptions 5 and 7, and that Schiff’s second request reasonably described the records sought. On the IRS’s motion for reconsideration, the court declined to revisit those holdings, finding no change in law, new evidence, or clear error that would warrant altering the outcome, and noting that the agency had already had an opportunity to support its exemption claims. The court did, however, amend its order to require production of only non-exempt material responsive to the second request and to remove language characterizing the ruling as final, consistent with both parties’ request for ongoing judicial oversight.
Martin Hamburger sued CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield and Caremark under ERISA, alleging denial of benefits and breach of fiduciary duty after the insurers refused to cover Zepbound, a GLP-1 drug his doctor prescribed to treat obstructive sleep apnea. The court dismissed both claims, ruling that the health plan’s Group Contract expressly excludes coverage for prescription drugs used for weight loss, and Zepbound falls under that exclusion as an anti-obesity agent even though the FDA approved it for sleep apnea in obese adults. The court found the fiduciary-duty claim duplicative of the benefits claim (which supplies an adequate remedy) and unsupported because the denial followed the plan’s terms without any breach. The putative class action also failed, as the named plaintiff lacked a viable individual claim.
Kimberly Clisbee filed a pro se complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the United States and various federal and California defendants, alleging medical malpractice, fraud, and other harms to her medically fragile daughter and disabled husband over more than a decade in California, along with related claims of stalking and retaliation. The court dismissed the 117-page complaint without prejudice for failing to satisfy Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8, which requires a short and plain statement of the claims that gives defendants fair notice. The opinion explained that the filing was excessively long, rambling, disjointed, and filled with incoherent allegations and irrelevant material, making it impossible to discern the specific claims or the court’s jurisdiction. It also denied Clisbee’s motion for recusal, finding no basis under 28 U.S.C. § 455, and denied her remaining motions for procedural and substantive deficiencies.
This case involves parents of a student with disabilities who sued the District of Columbia under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), alleging that DCPS failed to provide their child a free appropriate public education through adequate individualized education programs (IEPs) developed in 2019. After an administrative hearing officer twice denied the parents' claims for relief, including tuition reimbursement for a private school placement, the parents sought to overturn those decisions in federal court through cross-motions for summary judgment. The court adopted a magistrate judge's report and recommendation in full, granting in part and denying in part both motions. It upheld the hearing officer's conclusion that the December 2019 IEP was adequate under IDEA standards but did not resolve challenges to the other two IEPs because the parties did not object to those portions of the report. The court reasoned that the hearing officer had adequately considered the relevant evidence and issues on remand, and it gave due weight to his administrative findings while rejecting the parents' objections as largely rearguing how evidence should have been weighed.