This Week’s Lawsplainer Features Three Major Cases
Department of Justice Sues Five More States for Failure to Provide Voter Rolls
A WIN for Gun Rights out of none other than the D.C. Circuit
A divided panel (two out of three) of the D.C. Circuit blocked Trump’s efforts to end “Temporary Protected Status” for Haitians
More details follow with links to the actual decisions.
Department of Justice Sues Five More States for Failure to Provide Voter Rolls
The Department of Justice has continued its efforts to ensure well-maintained voter rolls and election security by filing federal lawsuits against five states – Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia, and New Jersey – for failing to produce their full voter registration lists to the DOJ in accordance with federal law. In total, the DOJ has sued 29 states and the District of Columbia. Sixteen states have either turned over their voter rolls or agreed “to provide the data.”
The Civil Rights Act of 1960 requires state election officials to “retain and preserve” all voter rolls and election records. It also grants the United States Attorney General the power to obtain those records for inspection as part of the Attorney General’s inquiry into these states’ compliance with federal election law – specifically, the investigation into whether states are removing ineligible voters and whether states are allowing the registration of voters without adequate identifying information.
As Attorney General Pam Bondi explained, “This latest series of litigation underscores that this Department of Justice is fulfilling its duty to ensure transparency, voter roll maintenance, and secure elections across the country.”
The DOJ’s efforts have already proven justified. Harmeet Dhillon, the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, informed Just the News that they have discovered “tens of thousands of noncitizens on the voter rolls, hundreds of dead people on the voter rolls, and duplicate registrations between states.” There is little doubt that those numbers will greatly increase as more of the voter rolls are provided to the DOJ.
D.C Court of Appeals upholds Second Amendment Rights
On March 5, 2026, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals held that the District’s ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition violates the Second Amendment.
In this case, the Court of Appeals reviewed a constitutional challenge to the District’s magazine ban. The defendant was prosecuted by the Biden Administration, which defended the ban’s constitutionality in the initial round of appellate briefing. The Trump Administration, to its credit, switched courses and conceded to the Court of Appeals that the ban violated the Second Amendment. The District of Columbia remained steadfast and argued – unsuccessfully – that the ban was constitutional.
Important to the court’s conclusion was that magazines are core components of firearms and are thus “covered by the Second Amendment’s plain text as a threshold matter.” To conclude otherwise would let the government “sidestep the Second Amendment” by prohibiting possession of firearm components.
The court also discussed the significance of the fact that these types of magazines “facilitate armed self-defense” and that law abiding citizens possess “hundreds of millions of them in this country.” These magazines are not the type of “dangerous and unusual” gun components that are allowed to be prohibited under Supreme Court precedent.
This ruling was issued by a three-judge panel. Moving forward, the District could either ask a larger panel of the Court of Appeals to reconsider its ruling or it could appeal to the Supreme Court.
The District of Columbia has a long history of hostility to the Second Amendment. In fact, its law generally prohibiting the possession of handguns led to the Supreme Court’s seminal decision in District of Columbia v. Heller where Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, held the Second Amendment guarantees the individual right to possess a firearm and that the District’s ban violated the Second Amendment. We expect the District to pursue its magazine ban up to the Supreme Court, if necessary.
U.S. Court of Appeals Rules Against the Trump Administration’s Immigration Efforts
A divided United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has ruled against the Trump Administration’s efforts to end the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of nearly 353,000 Haitians.
Those Haitian nationals were granted the TPS status back in 2010 by the Department of Homeland Security. The TPS designation allows Haitians to live and work in the United States. In November 2025, the Department of Homeland Security terminated the Temporary Protected Status of Haiti, leading to Haitian nationals filing suit in a D.C. District Court.
The District Court stayed the termination of the Haitians’ status, finding the Administration’s decision to be “arbitrary and capricious, contrary to the TPS statute, and in violation of the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee.”
The Government requested an emergency motion for stay pending appeal. Its arguments included: (1) the Government is irreparably harmed by an improper intrusion by a federal court into the workings of the Executive branch; (2) the Government was likely to prevail on the merits, as there is no judicial review available for the termination of the TPS designation. The Court of Appeals denied that request.
The Government’s argument was supported by the fact that Congress made the determination unreviewable by the courts. For those with Temporary Protected Status, federal law provides: “There is no judicial review of any determination of the [Secretary] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state.” 8 U.S.C § 1254a(b)(5)(A).
On March 11, 2026, less than a week after the ruling from the Court of Appeals, the Trump Administration filed an emergency petition asking the Supreme Court to allow it to terminate the Haitians’ Temporary Protected Status. The odds are in the Trump Administration’s favor. In a similar case involving the Temporary Protected Status of Venezuelan nationals living in the United States, the Supreme Court granted the Government’s request for a stay of a district court’s judgment.
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