Major AI companies around the world train their models on copyrighted material. The reason is simple: an AI model is only as good as the data used to train it, and building a useful model requires an enormous quantity of that data – far more than any company can feasibly produce on its own. So, companies like Anthropic, Google, and Meta turned to what was already available: books, articles, images, music, and code created by other people. While the training process involves models ingesting entire original works, these aren’t retained or even retrievable by the model. Rather, the process extracts statistical patterns about language, like relational vocabulary, syntax, and structure, and compresses them into numerical parameters to power future outputs. That mechanical reality is what makes the transformative fair use question surrounding AI so interesting, and the federal courts that have tried to answer this question have landed in strikingly different places. Because AI’s recent, explosive growth has outpaced the litigation surrounding it, we have an emerging split headed for circuit-level resolution rather than a mature circuit split.

A female St. John’s University (SJU) student Jane Doe (Doe) filed a complaint with the university that accused the plaintiff, John Roe, of sexually assaulting her while the two were studying abroad in Paris, which was a potential violation of the SJU’s sexual misconduct policy. SJU procedure is that those accused of misconduct undergo a “Conduct Hearing” (Hearing) overseen by a “Conduct Board” (Board), during which the Board will look at the available evidence relating to the accusation. The evidentiary standard at a Hearing is preponderance of the evidence, which is far lower than the one applied to criminal sexual assault charges, and there is no requirement for Hearings to strictly abide by the legal rules of evidence.

A DNA sequencing company in California and a rotary die cutting manufacturer in North Carolina both sued former business partners for stealing trade secrets under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA). Both complaints described the alleged secrets in general terms: customer databases, proprietary processes, confidential business information. One case moved forward. The other was dismissed at the pleading stage, the threshold at which a court decides whether a complaint states a viable claim. The difference was not the lawyering, the facts, or the statutory text; it was the forum.

The DTSA, enacted in 2016 as an amendment to the Economic Espionage Act (EEA), Pub. L. No. 114-153, 18 U.S.C. § 1836, created the first private civil federal cause of action for trade secret misappropriation. The statute defines “trade secret” broadly under 18 U.S.C. § 1839(3), but says nothing about how specifically a plaintiff must identify those secrets in a complaint. That silence has produced a circuit split that was, in hindsight, predictable from the statute’s design.

Between August 2013 and December 2017, securities trader Ongkaruck Sripetch orchestrated a series of pump-and-dump schemes involving at least twenty penny-stock companies, a form of fraud in which insiders inflate a stock’s price before selling to buyers at the peak. Working with a network of co-conspirators, Sripetch artificially inflated stock prices and sold shares to unwitting investors, pocketing over $2.25 million in illicit profits.

In response, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) brought a civil enforcement action, and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California ordered Sripetch to disgorge, or surrender to the court, $2,251,923 in profits plus $1,051,353 in prejudgment interest. The fraud was undisputed, but on appeal, Sripetch raised a question that has divided the federal circuits: can the SEC obtain disgorgement when it has not shown that any specific investor suffered financial harm?

There is almost nothing more contentious in the American legal, political, and cultural systems than public education. Public schools have been the sites of major legal battles, including free speech rights, school segregation, religious freedom, and now transgender rights. This series of litigation was sparked by the many states that have banned transgender students from accessing a bathroom consistent with their preferred gender identities in K-12 schools. These state laws and school board policies require students to use a bathroom that either corresponds with their biological sex or a single-stall restroom.

In 2024, the Supreme Court fundamentally reshaped administrative law when it overruled Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. NRDC, 467 U.S. 837 (1984), ending the longstanding rule requiring courts to defer to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes. For decades before that decision, judicial review operated under two related but distinct doctrines. Under Chevron, courts deferred to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes, while Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134 (1944), recognized agency interpretations as persuasive authority grounded in their reasoning, consistency, and expertise.

In June 2018, plaintiff Luis Orlando Pérez-Greaux had his Arecibo, Puerto Rico home raided by the Puerto Rico Police Department (PRPD) after a period of surveillance. Pérez-Greaux was cooperative throughout the search, during which the PRPD found three kilograms (roughly 6.5 pounds) of cocaine, a digital scale, firearm periodicals, a gun holster, firearm magazines, separately packed bullets, and a .9mm Glock pistol that had been modified to function as a fully automatic machinegun. When questioned, Pérez-Greaux claimed that he had started drug trafficking earlier that year by packing cocaine with toys or various miscellaneous items and shipping it to the continental United States via the United States Postal Service. Although he provided two different accounts as to who gave him the firearm and how, in both he obtained the firearm from another individual who did not inform him that the firearm operated as a machinegun.

In March 2018, Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Mark Solomon conducted a hearing regarding plaintiff Mollie Marie Flinton’s Social Security application. He had not been properly appointed at this time in compliance with the Constitution’s Appointment Clause, yet still issued a decision denying her benefits. After the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York remanded Flinton’s case to the Social Security Administration (SSA) for a near hearing in 2020, Flinton again appeared before ALJ Solomon for a hearing in August 2021. This time, however, ALJ Solomon had been ratified by the Commissioner of Social Security, now in compliance with the Constitution’s Appointment Clause. Pertinent to the case is the June 2018 Supreme Court decision in Lucia v. SEC, where the court held that ALJs of the SEC are “Officers of the United States” within the purview of the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. Since they were “inferior officers,” only “the President, a court of law, or a head of department” could properly appoint them to their positions.

After serving a state sentence for illegal use of a firearm, John Wayne Morgan Jr. was stopped by police in Louisiana in 2023 while riding in a vehicle containing four loaded guns, one of which was stolen. He was indicted on two federal charges: (1) being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), and (2) possessing unregistered firearms, in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d).

Morgan moved to dismiss both counts, arguing that the statutes violated the Second Amendment under New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022). In this case, the Supreme Court established a two-step framework for Second Amendment issues. First, courts ask whether the Amendment’s plain text covers the conduct at issue. If it does, the burden shifts to the government, and they must then demonstrate the existence of longstanding historical tradition of disarming those with criminal histories such as Morgan. Morgan contended that, under this test, the government could not justify § 922(g)(1) as applied to him because there was no founding-era tradition of disarming individuals based solely on a felony conviction rather than on demonstrated dangerousness.

In the 1924 case Hester v. United States, the Supreme Court made a distinction between so-called “open fields” and the areas afforded protection under the Fourth Amendment. This Amendment provides that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…” U.S. Const. amend. IV.  While not explicitly using the word “curtilage,” Justice Holmes refers to a distinction between the “special protection” given by the Fourth Amendment to the people [to be secure] in their 'persons, houses, papers and effects,'” and that this protection is not extended to the open fields. Hester v. United States, 265 U.S. 57, 59 (1924).

In 2017, Yogesh Pancholi agreed to a five-year voluntary exclusion from participating in Medicare and Medicaid programs after being accused of paying kickbacks to doctors for patient referrals in a civil False Claims Act suit. Within a year, Pancholi secretly purchased a home-health-care company, Shring Home Health Care, Inc., using a false identity and forged ownership documents. Between November and December 2018, Shring submitted nearly 900 fraudulent payment requests to Medicare totaling more than $2.7 million. Pancholi pocketed the proceeds and transferred them to India, where much of the money remains unrecovered. He was later charged with healthcare fraud, money laundering, witness tampering, and aggravated identity theft.

8 U.S.C. §1326 is a federal statute enacted in 1996 concerning the “reentry of removed aliens.” This statute provides a legal framework for non-citizen immigrants, referred to as aliens, who have been deported from the United States and wish to return or have already re-entered. 8 U.S.C.A. § 1326. This statute states that it is a federal offense for any non-citizen immigrant to attempt to re-enter, successfully re-enter, or be found in the United States after removal. See id.

Title IX was established fifty-three years ago to protect individuals from sex-based discriminatory practices in educational institutions that receive federal funding. The law prohibits these educational institutions from causing anyone to "be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity" based on that individual’s sex. 20 U.S.C. § 1681(a). 

The Fourteenth Amendment provides that no state may “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1. Analyzing whether one’s due process has been violated is a two-step process. First, the court must determine whether one has been deprived of a protected liberty or property interest. Second, if the court has determined that such a deprivation has occurred, then the court must determine if that deprivation occurred without constitutionally sufficient process. See Bd. Agents of Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 569-571 (1972); Prieto v. Clarke, 780 F.3d 245, 248 (4th Cir. 2015).

In response to rapid technological advances in the broadcast industry, Congress enacted the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to “promote competition and relax statutory ownership restrictions.” The Act gave the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) broad authority to regulate broadcast ownership and required, under Section 202(h), that the FCC review its media ownership rules every four years to determine whether they remain “necessary in the public interest as the result of competition.” In conducting these reviews, the FCC considers whether existing rules promote competition, localism, and diversity of viewpoints.

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” U.S. Const. amend. II. The Second Amendment is perhaps the most hotly debated provision of the Constitution. Whether focus is placed on the word “regulated,” “Militia,” “bear,” or “infringed,” interpretation of its plain language can yield a broad array of results. Because of this, there is a patchwork of regulations across states governing who may possess arms, what type, and in what locations.

The federal government imposes few firearms restrictions aside from those that regulate their sale or prohibit those found guilty of certain criminal conduct from purchasing or possessing firearms. It is one of the Commerce Clause restrictions that brings us today’s split.

The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution protects U.S. citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures, and further provides that warrants must be backed by probable cause. The government cannot violate a person’s “reasonable expectation of privacy” under the Fourth Amendment. United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400, 406 (2012).

The free speech clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution can be limited by the state to regulate professional conduct that contains speech. For example, a state may require a professional to be licensed in their field before being able to legally practice within that state. This expresses the state’s interest in promoting an ethical industry that limits potential harm to its citizens. If said professional is not licensed, the state may suppress their ability to communicate certain services or information to potential clients.

In 2019, Theory Wellness, an operator of marijuana dispensaries, contracted with Sean O’Donovan, a local Massachusetts attorney, to provide government-relations assistance in support of their endeavor to receive approval from the city of Medford, MA, to sell marijuana. O’Donovan attempted to influence  Medford’s chief of police through his brother to procure the approval by promising him some of the business's future proceeds but was eventually caught. He was found guilty of two counts of honest-services wire fraud and one count of federal program bribery. 

Copy and paste. Copy and paste. Copy and ... click. "You're under arrest," a police officer says. You protest, "But literally everyone uses this code!" "Tell it to the judge," the officer responds. "Or maybe it's the jury. We'll see." Should you care? Your future may depend on who makes that call.

The right to trial by jury, codified in the Seventh Amendment, stands as one of the fundamental rights of American citizens. Jacob v. New York City, 315 U.S. 752, 752 (1942). Yet, it is not unlimited. As the modern world becomes more complex, so do disputes