In United States v. Rahimi, the Supreme Court reversed the Fifth Circuit’s invalidation of a firearms-possession law, cautioning against a view of history that “trapped in amber” the world of the 1790s.

Nathan v. Alamo Heights ISD, a 9-7 opinion from the en banc Fifth Circuit, holds that a Texas law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments is constitutional, based on a history-focused test that considers state establishment of an official religion as the purpose of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. No. 25-50695 (April 21, 2026).

The questions whether (1) the Supreme Court’s Stone case from 1980, which is directly contrary to Nathan, continues to have precedential effect, and (2) whether the courts become “trapped in amber” by focusing on history to resolve a question about public schools, when nothing resembling modern public schools existed in the 1790s, seem likely to attract Supreme Court review. (Comments on a morning TV interview can be seen here.)

Cuevas Machine Co.v. Calgon Carbon Corp. certified a question about Mississippi construction-lien law to that state’s supreme court.

The issue was whether a lienor can satisfy the statutory requirement to “specify the date the claim was due”–defined as “the last date the labor, services or materials were supplied to the premises” under a Mississippi statute–by attaching invoices to the lien that do not plainly state such a date. The current version of the lien statute resulted from a major 2014 legislative overhaul, leaving little judicial guidance on how strictly its requirements should be read.

The court evaluated the three certification factors as follows. First, the question is narrow yet important, and the limited existing precedent largely predates the 2014 amendments. Second, the answer carries significant economic weight, including the seven-figure lien at stake, and will be dispositive of the case. Third, allowing the Mississippi Supreme Court to construe its own statute “will allow us to conclude this case in a manner that is not at risk of inconsistency with any later determination by that court.” No. 25-60198, Apr. 15, 2026.

While the appellant was unsuccessful in Pete v. Equifax, Inc., he seems to have set a record for an imaginative demand: “Appellant David Pete, proceeding pro se, sued Appellees Equifax and JND Legal for $200,000,000,000 under a variety of legal theories. The district court denied Pete’s in forma pauperis motion and ordered Pete to pay the filing fee because he falsely claimed the United States Attorney General owed him more than $100 quintillion.(emphasis added).

If you are a fan of the Moonshiners TV show, then McNutt v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice is for you. The Fifth Circuit summarized: “For more than 150 years, Congress has prohibited home distilleries as an adjunct to the law establishing a federal excise tax on distilled spirits. …  [W]hile venerable, the statute violates the Constitution’s Taxation and Necessary and Proper clauses.”

Specifically, the Court held that prohibiting individuals from distilling spirits at home is not “plainly adapted” to Congress’s enumerated power to tax distilled spirits. The statutes do not facilitate tax collection—rather, they prevent the creation of taxable products altogether. Citing McCullogh v. Maryland, the Court emphasized that “the Necessary and Proper Clause cannot expand the reach of the taxing power to criminalize conduct that could produce taxable revenue under the pretext that generating revenue for the federal government will be enhanced.”

The Court also held that the law is not “proper” because it effectively exercises a general police power reserved to the states, rather than legitimately carrying into execution the federal taxation power. In sum, the Court was that the government’s theory lacked a meaningful limiting principle, allowing Congress to ban virtually any home-based conduct on the mere possibility that it might conceal taxable activity. No. 24-10760; Apr. 10, 2026

The Fifth Circuit granted mandamus relief to send a case against Google from East Texas to California in In re Google. The district court focused on evidence that its median time to disposition and trial was faster than the proposed transferee court.

The Fifth Circuit found two flaws in this analysis. First, the Court emphasized that court congestion is the “most speculative” of the Volkswagen factors, and that median litigation timelines are “particularly unreliable” in complex cases, which tend to exceed a court’s average time-to-trial due to greater discovery and briefing demands.

Second, whatever weight the factor may deserve, the district court impermissibly allowed it to override every other factor in the analysis—a result that violated the Fifth Circuit’s longstanding rule that “no factor” in the venue transfer test may be “accorded dispositive weight.”

Because the district court found that all other factors either tipped in favor of transfer or were neutral, the court congestion factor “singlehandedly defeated transfer, in violation of [Fifth Circuit] precedent.” The court was unpersuaded by the argument that this reasoning should apply only when transfer is granted, stating plainly: “What is good for a grant must be good for a denial.” No. 25-40788 (5th Cir. Apr. 7, 2026).

A business avoided liability under the TCPA (the federal anti-robocall statute, not the Texas anti-SLAPP law) for unwanted calls when the plaintiff had given consent to the communications at issue:

Bradford … gave prior express consent. He provided his cell-phone number when he entered into the service-plan agreement with Sovereign Pest. Bradford has expressly stated that he gave Sovereign Pest his phone number so that the company could get in touch with him. He confirmed that Sovereign Pest could call him on his  cell phone during later conversations with the company. … We also note that the service-plan agreement provided that Sovereign Pest and Bradford could “extend the agreement annually” for another year if both parties consented. The inspections to which Sovereign Pest’s renewal-inspection calls led facilitated Sovereign Pest’s decision to renew the agreement. Despite Bradford’s protestations about the renewal-inspection calls now, he chose to renew the service-plan agreement four times. 

No. 24-20379 (Feb. 25, 2026).

A frequently reversed issue in commercial cases before the Fifth Circuit is contract ambiguity. The newest example is Porch.com v. Gallagher Re, where a contract term required an insurance broker to provide “Administrative Services,” defined to include “all servicing duties customarily performed by a reinsurance intermediary-broker after the placement of the reinsurance contract, including but not limited to . . . administering all reserve funding.”

The insured alleged that its reinsurance broker failed to recognize the difference between a mere collateral letter and a letter of credit—the specific instrument that the reinsurance contract called for—and then repeatedly misrepresented the collateral as valid.

The district court dismissed the claim, reasoning that the insured’s allegations related only to the initial placement of reinsurance. The Fifth Circuit disagreed, concluding that the contract term was, at a minimum, ambiguous as to the broker’s duties, explaining that “it is at least reasonable to interpret that provision as including [the broker’s] duties with respect to the letter of credit.”

The Court also emphasized that determination of what servicing duties are “customarily performed” by a reinsurance intermediary-broker is a fact question that cannot properly be resolved on a motion to dismiss. In so doing, the Court rejected the broker’s argument that the insured was seeking to transform purely ministerial tasks into broad duties to investigate the solvency of third parties. The Court found that the complaint simply alleged that the broker did not perform the routine administrative oversight contemplated by the contract’s broad language. No. 25-10489 (Apr. 2, 2026).