Animal rights groups are going to court to fight “ag-gag” laws, which punish would-be whistleblowers who record activity on farms and at animal procession facilities.

Anyone deemed to be “gravely disabled” or suffering from a significant substance abuse disorder can be placed into a conservatorship and institutionalized for an initial 72-hour hold. Longer placements can also happen.

Widely regarded by legal experts as one of the world’s most powerful statutes for protection of wildlife and ecosystems, the Nixon-era Endangered Species Act has halted the decline of hundreds of species along with protecting their habitats. But the unified political support that led to the act has vanished.

Eleven Republican-led states sued on Thursday to overturn President Joseph R. Biden’s new student loan repayment plan, arguing the program is a scheme to provide widespread debt relief that the Supreme Court struck down last year.

When Nina Olson retired from the Internal Revenue Service in 2019, she knew her work wasn’t finished. “I kept saying, ‘I’m privileged and lucky to have been in the IRS for 18 years, and to have a sense of how the IRS works,’” she says. “I needed to share it in some way.” That same year, Olson started the Center for Taxpayer Rights.

The board appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis to oversee Disney’s former special taxing district agreed Wednesday to a settlement with the entertainment giant, capping a legal feud over who should control development at the sprawling theme park complex.

Montana’s highest court on Wednesday struck down four laws that the state’s Republican-led legislature passed in 2021 to restrict voting.

A California judge recommended that conservative attorney John Eastman be disbarred in the state over his role in developing a legal strategy to help President Donald Trump stay in power after his 2020 election loss.

The owner of the ship that rammed into a Baltimore bridge could face hundreds of millions of dollars in damage claims after the accident sent vehicles plunging into the water and threw the eastern US transportation network into chaos. But legal experts said there is a path for reducing liability under an obscure 19th-century law once invoked by the owner of the Titanic to limit its payout for the 1912 sinking.

A new Texas law that empowers state officials to detain and deport migrants will remain on hold, after a divided appeals court ruling late Tuesday that said the statutes “significantly impair the exercise of discretion by federal immigration officials.”