A bellwether federal trial began on Tuesday testing whether Meta can be held liable for designing its platforms, Facebook and Instagram, to addict youth users. The case, In re: Social Media Adolscent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Litigation, is a consolidated multi-district litigation (MDL) under 28 USC 1407. The lawsuit combines claims brought by a coalition of [...]

Five South American countries on Tuesday announced completion of a two-week joint law enforcement operation targeting environmental crimes across the Amazon rainforest. The campaign, dubbed Operation Green Shield 2026, resulted in over 800 arrests and the seizure of hundreds of millions of dollars in timber, minerals and livestock. The campaign was coordinated by the International [...]

A US federal judge on Tuesday ruled that a Houston, Texas, city program establishing racial goals for public contracts violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, striking down the policy in one of the first rulings to extend a Supreme Court landmark 2023 affirmative action holding beyond the context of college admissions. Houston’s Minority, Women, and [...]

The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on Tuesday voted to advance a proposal that would end a nearly 60-year-old requirement for millions of employers to report the race and sex demographics of their workforce to the federal government. In 1966, the newly formed EEOC enacted its EEO-1 reporting requirement, mandating that employers with 100 [...]

A US federal court on Tuesday closed a school desegregation lawsuit originally filed in 1965, effectively ending a decades-long mandate for federal oversight of school desegregation in Concordia Parish, Louisiana. The case, Smith v. Concordia Parish School Board, was brought 11 years after the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education took effect. Private [...]

A coalition of 12 state attorneys general (AG) on Monday filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block Paramount’s proposed $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. under antitrust concerns, threatening what would be the largest merger in the history of Hollywood. The AGs, led by California AG Rob Bonta, filed the complaint in the Northern District [...]

Meta revealed in a court filing Monday that state attorneys general (AGs) are seeking up to $1.4 trillion in penalties ahead of an August trial over claims that the company knowingly designed Facebook and Instagram to be addictive to teen users. The staggering figure represents the large share of Meta’s total market capitalization, currently listed [...]

The US Supreme Court on Tuesday granted certiorari to two consolidated cases challenging “assault weapon” bans, setting the stage to potentially reshape firearm regulations across the country. The court agreed to hear Viramontes v. Cook County out of the Seventh Circuit and Grant v. Higgins out of the Second Circuit, consolidating the cases for a [...]

A US federal judge in California on Tuesday vacated four of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies, holding that immigration officials have failed to provide a legally sufficient justification for eliminating longstanding limits on civil immigration enforcement at courthouses. The court granted the plaintiffs’ motions for summary judgment, finding that the challenged policies are arbitrary [...]

Former South Korean Justice Minister Park Sung-jae was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Monday for his role in former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s 2024 declaration of martial law, according to local media.  The Seoul Central District Court found Park guilty of insurrection under Article 87 of the Statutes of the Republic of Korea, and [...]