Summary: U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin grants final approval Anthropic settles class action for $1.5 billion Attorneys awarded over $101 million in fees A federal judge in San Francisco on July 20 signed off on artificial intelligence company Anthropic's landmark $1.5 billion settlement of a class action lawsuit brought by a group of authors who accused it of misusing their books to train its AI chatbot Claude. U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin granted final approval of the settlement, the largest known settlement of a U.S. copyright case, rejecting arguments that it was too small. The case is one of dozens brought by copyright owners including authors and news outlets against tech companies over the training of their large language models, and the first major U.S. case to settle. Now-retired Judge William Alsup initially approved the deal last September. "We reached this settlement in 2025, after the court's landmark ruling that training AI on books is fair use under copyright law — which remains the law today," Anthropic deputy general counsel Aparna Sridhar said in a statement. The authors' lead attorney, Justin Nelson, welcomed what he called a "historic settlement." The writers sued Anthropic in 2024, arguing that the company, which is backed by ⁠Amazon and Alphabet , used pirated versions of their books without permission to teach Claude to respond to human prompts. Alsup ruled last June that Anthropic made fair ⁠use of the authors' work to train Claude, but found that the company violated their rights by saving more than 7 million pirated books to a "central library" that would not necessarily be used for AI training. A trial was scheduled to begin last December ⁠to determine how much Anthropic owed for the alleged piracy, with potential damages running into the hundreds of billions of dollars. The settlement spurred objections from some authors who argued it was not large enough, overcompensated the plaintiffs' attorneys or wrongly excluded some copyright owners. Judge Martinez-Olguin overruled those objections in her ruling on July 20. The judge said that complaints about the settlement's size were "not grounded in a realistic assessment of the overall risks and rewards of a trial," and awarded the attorneys more than $101 million of the $187.5 million they requested in fees. Some authors and publishers opted out of the settlement and have filed separate lawsuits against Anthropic that are still ongoing.

Summary: 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules assault weapons ban unconstitutional Court invalidates ban on semiautomatic rifles and large-capacity magazines Judge Arianna Freeman cites Supreme Court's Second Amendment precedent A federal appeals court on July 17 ruled that New Jersey's assault-weapons law barring possession of semiautomatic rifles like AR-15s and large capacity magazines containing more than 10 rounds of ammunition is unconstitutional. The ruling by the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals marked the first time a federal appeals court had ruled that a state's assault weapons ban violated the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. That issue is already in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed last month to review rulings that had upheld similar bans adopted in Cook County, Illinois, and Connecticut against powerful semiautomatic rifles. The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority. The ruling on July 17 came in lawsuits filed by gun rights groups that said New Jersey's law could no longer stand after the Supreme Court handed down a landmark Second Amendment ruling in 2022 that expanded gun rights. That decision, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, held that modern gun restrictions must be "consistent with this nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation." Lawyers for Democratic-led New Jersey had argued that the state, like 10 other U.S. states, was justified in banning assault weapons, which they characterized as military-style weapons that can cause "wholesale destruction" and fuel mass shootings. A lower-court judge in 2024 delivered a mixed ruling, holding New Jersey's 1990 ban on AR-15 rifles was unconstitutional but that its prohibition of large-capacity ammunition magazines could stand. The appeals court by a 10-5 vote went even further, declaring the ban on all types of semi-automatic rifles, and not just AR-15s, violates the Second Amendment, as does the large-capacity magazine ban. The court also directed a lower-court judge to assess the constitutionality of the assault weapons ban as applied to other types of firearms, such as semi-automatic pistols and shotguns. U.S. Circuit Judge Arianna Freeman said the Supreme Court's recent Second Amendment rulings "teach that bans or broad prohibitions on possessing or carrying of a class of weapons in common use for lawful purposes fail to find support in our Nation’s tradition of firearm regulation." "That is so even when the regulations are passed with the intention of reducing gun violence," Freeman wrote for the court.

Summary: New York Times files motion to quash subpoenas Subpoenas issued by U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton in Manhattan Justice Department limits subpoenas of journalists The New York Times has filed a court motion to block federal grand jury subpoenas to three of its journalists over their reporting on President Donald Trump's new Qatari-donated Air Force One, a spokesperson said on July 15. Jay Clayton, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, issued the subpoenas last on July 10, shortly after the New York Times reported that the new Air Force One lacked some of the security features of the older aircraft. The newspaper's reporters were ordered to appear before a grand jury panel in Manhattan federal court. "As we set out in our motion, these subpoenas are brought in bad faith to punish The Times for its coverage," David McCraw, senior vice president and deputy general counsel of the New York Times, said in a statement. Several press advocacy groups have accused Trump of using government power and private lawsuits to bully and harass the news media. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told a U.S. Senate panel on July 15 that the reporters were not targets of an investigation, but the subpoenas were aimed at identifying people who leaked sensitive national security information. Justice Department policies place limitations on subpoenas of journalists and require that they receive top-level approval. Motions such as McCraw's seeking to quash a subpoena are typically under seal because of the secrecy of grand jury proceedings. McCraw, however, has asked the court to make the motion public, saying the newspaper "believes that the public has a right to information about this case." Both Republican and Democratic administrations have sought to compel journalists to reveal sources when probing leaks to the press, but media advocacy groups says Trump's Republican administration has used subpoenas and search warrants too freely, including against the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. Both the National Press Club and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press criticized the subpoenas of the New York Times. In January, press freedom groups criticized the FBI for taking the rare step of searching the home of a Washington Post reporter as part of a leak probe. Federal judges have shown a rare willingness during the Trump administration to block subpoenas in investigations they find are politically motivated. Courts this year have quashed demands for information in probes of former Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Democratic officials in Minnesota. The Justice Department has in previous cases withdrawn grand jury subpoenas against Washington Post and Wall Street Journal reporters after challenges against them in sealed court filings.