SCOTUS Weighs Intel 401(k) Suit; Judge Tosses Noncitizen-Vote Charge; 'Let's Go Brandon' Denied: Oct 6

Better Call Claude Briefing — Oct 6, 2026

The Supreme Court's second day of arguments turned to how workers can challenge their 401(k) plans, Monday's long-conference order list turned away "Let's Go Brandon" sweatshirts and a federal felon gun-ban appeal, a Miami federal judge held that Congress can't make noncitizen voting a federal crime in at least one case, and courts kept drawing the lines in AI-training fights. General news roundup only — not legal advice.

SCOTUS weighs how hard it should be to sue over 401(k) investments

On Tuesday, October 6, the Supreme Court heard Anderson v. Intel Corp. Investment Policy Committee, a case brought by Intel employees who say the company's retirement plan committee moved them into "costly and illiquid" hedge-fund and private-equity investments after the 2008 financial crisis. Lower courts dismissed the suit under the "meaningful benchmark" standard, which requires workers alleging imprudence under ERISA to point to a better-performing fund with similar aims and risk; the Ninth Circuit said the employees compared Intel's funds to ordinary equity-heavy funds instead. The workers, represented by Matt Wessler of Gupta Wessler, argue the rule is a heightened pleading bar with no basis in the statute that shields fiduciaries who pick unusual strategies, while Intel's committee, backed by the Solicitor General's office, says nearly every fund underperforms some other fund and a sound comparison is ordinary plausibility pleading. Bloomberg Law reports none of the justices seemed ready to let plan participants challenge performance with no comparison at all, but they were torn over how much guidance to give lower courts. Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked whether requiring "like aims and strategies" would send judges "looking for a twin," and Justice Elena Kagan floated saying a benchmark must be "meaningfully similar" but need not be identical. Cornell's LII preview notes the circuits are split, with the Sixth Circuit treating a benchmark as useful but not always required. With ERISA class actions up markedly in 2026, the decision could shape whether these suits reach discovery or end at the motion-to-dismiss stage.

Sources: Bloomberg Law, Cornell LII case preview, SCOTUSblog docket

Long-conference orders: no review for "Let's Go Brandon," felon gun ban, vaccine mandates

Before Monday's first arguments, the Supreme Court released its order list from the September 28 "long conference" and denied review in hundreds of cases. In D.A. v. Tri County Area Schools, the justices declined to hear two Michigan brothers who were told to remove "Let's Go Brandon" sweatshirts at their middle school in 2022, leaving in place a divided Sixth Circuit ruling that the slogan's "plainly vulgar meaning" let the school bar it even though it is political. The Court also turned down the federal government's petition in United States v. Hembree, in which the Fifth Circuit held the federal felon-in-possession law unconstitutional as applied to a man whose prior felony was simple methamphetamine possession; the denial leaves that ruling standing months after the Court's June Hemani decision expressly left the felon ban unaddressed. Two COVID-19 vaccine-mandate cases out of Washington state were also denied, including a firefighters' Title VII appeal over how much proof an employer needs to show "undue hardship" after Groff v. DeJoy. Other denials included a Maine lobsterman's Fourth Amendment challenge to vessel tracking devices, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani's Theranos appeal, Dylann Roof's judicial-bias petition, and Roy Moore's bid to revive an $8.2 million defamation verdict. The Court also sent the Venezuelan and Haitian TPS case back to the Ninth Circuit in light of its June ruling and asked the Solicitor General for views on whether federal banking law preempts state mortgage-escrow interest laws. Denials set no national precedent, but they leave the lower-court rulings in force for now.

Sources: SCOTUSblog

Miami federal judge: Congress can't set voter qualifications, tosses noncitizen-voting charge

U.S. District Judge David Leibowitz in Miami has dismissed the federal prosecution of Chelsea Michelle Ann Cox, a Jamaican national charged in October 2025 with a misdemeanor for allegedly voting in Broward County in the 2020 presidential election while not a citizen. In a 31-page opinion, Leibowitz held that Section 611, the federal law making it a crime for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, is unconstitutional as applied to Cox because it is "a voter qualification statute," and the Constitution reserves the general power to set voter qualifications to the states, not Congress. He leaned on the Constitution's text and the Supreme Court's 2013 Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council decision, and rejected the Justice Department's reliance on the fractured 1970 Oregon v. Mitchell ruling. The judge stressed that he assumed every alleged fact was true, and the Miami Herald notes the ruling does not make noncitizen voting legal, since Florida and other states separately ban it, and does not strike the law nationwide. The Justice Department filed its notice of appeal to the Eleventh Circuit on October 2, and on Monday it announced charges against 16 more noncitizens over alleged illegal voting and related crimes. Sen. Mike Lee called the ruling "insane," while a Miami defense lawyer who raised the same argument in another case predicted it will reach the Supreme Court. The outcome could limit a federal statute the administration is leaning on more heavily, though charges like false claims of citizenship rest on other laws.

Sources: Miami Herald

AI training fights: Third Circuit's ROSS ruling ripples out as ByteDance must face YouTubers' DMCA suit

The Third Circuit's September 29 decision in Thomson Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence, which Haynes Boone calls the first federal appellate ruling on fair use in AI training, is now being read for its reach into other AI cases. Judge Tamika Montgomery-Reeves wrote for the panel that 2,243 Westlaw headnotes are copyrightable and that ROSS's use of them to train a competing legal-research search tool was commercial, minimally transformative at best, and not fair use, adding that "ease is not a justification for copying" when ROSS had free access to the underlying opinions. The panel also recognized licensing text as AI training data as a real derivative market, even though Thomson Reuters had not licensed its headnotes to anyone, while a footnote carved out generative models like those in Bartz v. Anthropic because ROSS's system could not generate original expression. Music Business Worldwide reported October 5 that the RIAA and NMPA had backed Thomson Reuters with the music labels' Suno litigation in mind, and that ROSS's lawyers have said they intend to seek Supreme Court review. Separately, on October 2, U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in San Francisco refused to dismiss a suit by Ted Entertainment and creator Matt Fisher alleging ByteDance bypassed YouTube's technical protections, such as proof-of-origin tokens, to collect videos for AI models including Seedance. Judge Corley held at the pleading stage that the creators plausibly alleged those measures control access to their works under the DMCA's anti-circumvention provision and that they can sue, though she did not decide whether ByteDance actually circumvented anything or whether AI training infringes. Together the rulings suggest courts are focusing on how AI companies obtained data and whether their products compete with the source material.

Sources: Haynes Boone, Nieman Lab, Music Business Worldwide, Trademark Lawyer Magazine

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This Briefing is general news for Better Call Claude readers. It is not legal advice, and nothing here creates an attorney-client relationship. Check primary sources and talk to a licensed lawyer about your situation.