Minimum Competence

About Minimum Competence

Minimum Competence is your daily companion for legal news, designed to bring you up to speed on the day’s major legal stories during your commute home. Each episode is short, clear, and informative—just enough to make you minimally competent on the key developments in law, policy, and regulation. Whether you’re a lawyer, law student, journalist, or just legal-curious, you’ll get a smart summary without the fluff. A full transcript of each episode is available via the companion newsletter at www.minimumcomp.com. www.minimumcomp.com (https://www.minimumcomp.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Andrew and Gina Leahey

Category

news · news

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

31 Jan 2023

Latest episode

15 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

930 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   15 Oct 2026

   SCOTUS Again Backs Republicans on Political Ad Rates, a Judge Lets the Contractor DEI Order Stand & Eight States Sue OpenAI Over ChatGPT and Kids

   This Day in Legal History: The Clayton Antitrust Act On October 15, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Clayton Antitrust Act. The Sherman Act of 1890 had banned contracts in restraint of trade and monopolization, but in broad language that left courts to decide case by case what was illegal. Clayton filled in specifics. It prohibited price discrimination that would substantially lessen competition, exclusive-dealing and tying arrangements with the same effect, interlocking boards of directors among competitors, and mergers whose effect “may be substantially to lessen competition.” That last provision, Section 7, is still the main federal merger law today. The Federal Trade Commission was created the same year to help enforce it. Clayton also took on a problem the Sherman Act had created for workers. Courts had used the Sherman Act against labor unions, treating strikes and boycotts as illegal combinations in restraint of trade. Clayton declared that “the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce,” the line in today’s opening quote, and tried to shield ordinary union activity from antitrust suits and injunctions. Courts read those protections narrowly for years, and it took later laws, like the Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932, to make them work. The significance of October 15, 1914 is that it established a lasting principle of American regulation: that some sellers can’t charge different prices to different customers when it distorts competition. Our first story today is about a very different pricing rule, one that requires broadcasters to give political candidates their lowest ad rates, and about who else gets to claim that discount. The Supreme Court has sided with Republicans for the second time in a fight over discounted TV ad rates. Federal law requires broadcasters to sell political candidates airtime at the “lowest unit charge,” the same discounted rate a station gives its best commercial advertisers, in the weeks before an election. In March, the Federal Communications Commission, which has a 2-to-1 Republican majority, changed its guidance to extend that discount to party committees, not just candidates. Republican committees, which have a cash advantage this cycle, stand to benefit most. Democrats challenged the change. The Fourth Circuit had ordered the FCC to rule on the Democratic challenge before the November 3 election, which would have let the courts decide the question quickly. In an unsigned order Wednesday, the Supreme Court paused that deadline, accepting the FCC’s argument that it would suffer “irreparable harm” otherwise. Justices Sotomayor and Jackson would have denied the request. In September, the Court had already ruled the challenge was premature. The practical effect is that the dispute is frozen until after the election, and in the meantime the FCC’s guidance stays in place. One complication: according to NBC News, some broadcasters have already been declining to give committees the discounted rate, because they’re unsure the guidance is lawful. So committees may not actually get the discount everywhere, but they also won’t get a ruling to settle it before voters go to the polls. This fits a broader pattern of Supreme Court decisions this year expanding what political parties can do. In June, the Court’s conservative majority struck down longstanding limits on how much parties can coordinate spending with their candidates. Discounted airtime for party committees makes that coordinated spending go further. As with the voting cases we’ve covered all fall, the timing of a court’s decision can matter as much as what it decides. US Supreme Court again backs Republicans in clash over political ad rates | Reuters (https://www.reuters.com/world/us-supreme-court-again-backs-republicans-clash-over-political-ad-rates-2026-10-14/) · Roll Call (https://rollcall.com/2026/10/14/political-ad-rates-case-frozen-through-midterms/) · NBC News (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/justices-back-republicans-election-ad-rate-dispute-nrcc-nrsc-fcc-rcna595538) A federal judge in Baltimore has declined to block the President’s executive order targeting diversity programs at federal contractors. The order, issued in March, requires contractors to disavow “racially discriminatory DEI activities” and certify in writing that they comply. Contractors that don’t comply can lose contracts and be investigated under the False Claims Act, which brings the risk of triple damages. Groups representing university faculty and minority business owners sued, arguing that the order effectively treats all diversity efforts as illegal discrimination and chills protected speech. U.S. District Judge Adam Abelson disagreed with that reading. He held that the order “only prohibits contractors from engaging in conduct that is already prohibited by federal law,” namely intentional discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity, and so the challengers hadn’t shown it was too broad. Here’s what’s interesting about the ruling: both sides can find something to like in it. The administration keeps its order in place. But the plaintiffs’ lawyers at Democracy Forward pointed out that the judge’s reasoning makes clear the order doesn’t broadly prohibit diversity programs. If the order only forbids what Title VII and other civil rights laws already forbid, then programs that don’t involve intentional race discrimination, such as recruiting at a wider range of schools, mentoring open to everyone, or training, aren’t covered. That narrow reading may limit how aggressively the government can use the certification requirement and the False Claims Act against contractors. Narrowing a law to save it is a common judicial move. Courts often adopt the reading that avoids constitutional problems. This was also only a denial of a preliminary injunction, so the case continues, and a separate challenge by 19 states and D.C. is pending in the same court. US judge won’t block Trump order targeting DEI by federal contractors | Reuters (https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-judge-wont-block-trump-order-targeting-dei-by-federal-contractors-2026-10-14/) · Law360 (https://www.law360.com/articles/2537921/groups-can-t-freeze-order-mandating-contractor-dei-rule) · GV Wire (https://gvwire.com/2026/10/14/us-judge-wont-block-trump-order-targeting-dei-by-federal-contractors/) And finally, eight states have sued OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT harms children and misleads parents about its safety. Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, West Virginia, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho, and Montana each filed separately in their own state courts. The complaints allege that ChatGPT is designed to be overly agreeable and to imitate human compassion, and that this has led it to coach young users toward self-harm, suicide, or violence. Iowa’s attorney general said the chatbot gives dangerous medical advice. West Virginia’s said it lacks adequate safeguards for conversations about suicide, school shootings, and self-harm. The claims rest mainly on state consumer-protection laws, alleging deceptive marketing and harmful design, and the states are seeking changes to how ChatGPT operates, along with penalties and the return of profits made from young users. OpenAI points to its age-based protections and a dedicated teen version of ChatGPT, and says it continues to improve its safety features. Two things are worth noting. First, the strategy. Filing separately in eight state courts, under eight state laws, means OpenAI has to defend on many fronts at once, and it makes it harder to move everything into one federal courtroom. It’s the same approach states have used against social media companies, which led to the Alabama TikTok settlement and the New Mexico verdict against Meta we’ve covered recently. Second, this joins Florida’s case against OpenAI, filed in June, in which Florida has since asked the court to stop the company from developing new models without outside oversight. These suits will also test an open legal question: whether the output of an AI chatbot is treated more like a product, which can be defectively designed, or more like speech, which gets First Amendment protection. How courts answer that will shape AI liability for years. Eight US states sue OpenAI claiming ChatGPT harms children | Reuters (https://www.reuters.com/world/eight-us-states-sue-openai-claiming-chatgpt-harms-children-2026-10-14/) · CNBC (https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/14/openai-sued-by-8-states-over-chatgpt-safety-concerns-.html) · Seeking Alpha (https://seekingalpha.com/news/4653098-openais-legal-issues-mount-as-eight-states-sue-chatgpt-maker-for-harming-children) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe (https://www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

2. 

   14 Oct 2026

   Qualcomm Beats Arm but Wins $2, Anthropic Asks the Full D.C. Circuit to Rehear Its Pentagon Case & CVS Pays $315M Over Opioid Prescriptions

   This Day in Legal History: The Death of the Great Dissenter On October 14, 1911, Justice John Marshall Harlan died after nearly 34 years on the Supreme Court. Harlan was an unlikely civil rights hero. He was a Kentuckian from a slaveholding family who had opposed the Thirteenth Amendment before the war’s aftermath changed his views. On the Court, he became known as the “Great Dissenter” for standing alone, again and again, against the majority’s narrowing of the Reconstruction Amendments. His most famous dissent came in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, when the Court upheld Louisiana’s law segregating railroad cars under the doctrine of “separate but equal.” Harlan was the only justice to disagree. He wrote that the Constitution is “color-blind” and “neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens,” and he predicted the decision would prove as harmful as Dred Scott. Thirteen years earlier, in the Civil Rights Cases, he had also dissented alone when the Court struck down the federal ban on racial discrimination in public accommodations. The significance of October 14, 1911 is what happened to Harlan’s dissents after his death. Brown v. Board of Education rejected Plessy in 1954, and Congress revived the public-accommodations protections in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Dissents don’t decide the case in front of the court, but they can shape the law that comes after. That’s worth keeping in mind for our second story, where a 2-1 appellate decision with a dissent is now headed toward review by the full court. A federal jury in Delaware found that chip-design company Arm breached its license agreement with Qualcomm and intentionally interfered with Qualcomm’s business relationship with Meta. Then it awarded Qualcomm nominal damages of $2. Both companies are claiming victory. Qualcomm says the jury found Arm failed to honor its commitments and acted to disrupt its business. Arm says the jury ruled for it on four separate claims and awarded only a dollar on each of the two claims Qualcomm won, which it says shows Arm acted in good faith. Some background: Arm licenses the instruction-set architecture that most of the world’s smartphone chips are built on. Qualcomm holds an architectural license, which lets it design its own custom processors around Arm’s architecture. These companies have been fighting for years. In the first trial, two years ago, a jury rejected Arm’s claim that Qualcomm breached its license after acquiring the chip startup Nuvia. This second trial was Qualcomm’s case against Arm. The legal point worth explaining is nominal damages. In contract law, proving a breach doesn’t automatically get you money. You also have to prove that the breach caused you a measurable loss, and how big that loss was. When a jury finds that a breach happened but the plaintiff didn’t prove actual damages, it can award a token amount, often a dollar, to recognize that the plaintiff’s rights were violated. So a $2 verdict tells you the jury believed Arm did something wrong but wasn’t persuaded Qualcomm proved it lost money as a result. A finding of liability can still matter: it may support other relief like an injunction, affect leverage in licensing negotiations, and help in future disputes between the same parties. But as a matter of damages, Qualcomm won the argument and lost the payout. The markets agreed it was close to a draw: Arm shares slipped about one percent, and Qualcomm’s rose about the same. Qualcomm says jury found Arm breached license agreement | Reuters (https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/qualcomm-says-jury-found-arm-breached-license-agreement-2026-10-13/) · CNBC (https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/13/delaware-jury-qualcomm-arm-license-agreement.html) · Yahoo Finance (https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/articles/arm-qcom-lawsuit-delaware-jury-195949252.html) The AI company Anthropic has asked the full D.C. Circuit to rehear its challenge to the Pentagon’s decision to label it a “supply chain risk.” That designation bars the Defense Department and its contractors from using Anthropic’s Claude models for Pentagon work. The fight began in February, when the President ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s technology, and the Defense Secretary made the formal designation in March. Anthropic has said the blacklisting has cost it billions of dollars in lost business. In September, a three-judge D.C. Circuit panel upheld the designation, 2 to 1. The majority said the Pentagon acted reasonably after Anthropic refused to allow its AI to be used for autonomous weapons or mass surveillance, and it rejected Anthropic’s claim that the designation was retaliation for the company’s public views on AI safety. Anthropic is now asking for rehearing en banc, meaning by all the active judges on the court rather than the three-judge panel. Its argument is that the panel turned a law aimed at hostile foreign actors into one that “presumptively reaches every government contractor,” and that the Pentagon acted with no process before the designation despite strong evidence of retaliation for speech. There are two important questions here. One is statutory: how broadly the government’s supply-chain-risk authority reaches, and whether a domestic company can be cut off on the same terms as a foreign adversary’s suppliers. The other is constitutional: the government generally can’t punish a contractor for its speech, but it has a lot of discretion to choose what products it buys, especially for national defense. Notably, in a separate case in August, a federal judge in California struck down a parallel designation under a different statute, calling the Pentagon’s campaign unlawful retaliation. So two courts have reached different results on closely related facts. Full-court rehearing is rarely granted, and it’s usually reserved for questions of exceptional importance or conflicts in the law. Anthropic is arguing this qualifies on both counts. If the full court declines, the next stop could be the Supreme Court. Anthropic seeks rehearing of case over Pentagon’s security risk branding | Reuters (https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/anthropic-seeks-rehearing-case-over-pentagons-security-risk-branding-2026-10-14/) · The Next Web (https://thenextweb.com/news/anthropic-pentagon-rehearing-bid) · BusinessWorld (https://bworldonline.com/technology/2026/10/14/786859/anthropic-seeks-rehearing-of-case-over-pentagons-security-risk-branding/) And finally, CVS has agreed to pay $315 million to settle Justice Department claims over opioid prescriptions. The government alleged that from 2013 through 2025, CVS pharmacies filled prescriptions for opioids and other controlled substances that had no legitimate medical purpose, then billed Medicare and other federal health programs for many of them. The warning signs cited include unusually large quantities, early refills, and so-called “trinity” prescriptions, a combination of an opioid, a benzodiazepine, and a muscle relaxant that’s widely recognized as a sign of abuse and a serious overdose risk. CVS disagrees with the allegations and isn’t admitting wrongdoing, and it says its pharmacists are highly trained. Two federal laws are doing the work here. The first is the Controlled Substances Act, which gives pharmacists their own legal responsibility, separate from the prescribing doctor, not to fill a prescription they know or should know isn’t legitimate. Pharmacists aren’t just order-takers. The second is the False Claims Act, which makes it unlawful to bill the government for services that don’t meet legal requirements, and which allows triple damages and penalties. This case also shows how the False Claims Act’s whistleblower provision works. It started in 2019 with a lawsuit filed by a former CVS employee, Hillary Estright, on the government’s behalf. The Justice Department joined and filed its own complaint in 2024. Whistleblowers in these cases can receive a share of the recovery, typically between 15 and 30 percent, which is why so many large fraud settlements begin with an insider. For perspective, the Justice Department settled a similar case against Walmart in August for $50 million, and CVS agreed in 2022 to pay nearly $5 billion to settle opioid claims by states, cities, and tribes. Taken together, these settlements show the government holding pharmacies, not just manufacturers and distributors, responsible for their role in the opioid crisis. CVS to pay $315 million to settle unlawful opioid prescription claims, Justice Department says | Reuters (https://www.reuters.com/world/cvs-pay-315-million-settle-unlawful-opioid-prescription-claims-justice-2026-10-13/) · NBC News (https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cvs-pay-315-million-settle-opioid-prescription-case-rcna603289) · Becker’s Hospital Review (https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/pharmacy/cvs-to-pay-315m-over-opioid-prescriptions-trinity-drug-combos-justice-department/) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe (https://www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

3. 

   13 Oct 2026

   Federal Agents Search Ilhan Omar’s Home, a Judge Is “Furious” Over Felled Trees at a D.C. Golf Course & Protecting Trump Accounts From Fraud

   This Day in Legal History: In re Turner On October 13, 1867, Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, sitting as a circuit judge in Baltimore, decided In re Turner. Maryland had abolished slavery in its 1864 constitution, but former enslavers quickly found a workaround: a state apprenticeship law that let courts bind Black children to white employers, often their former masters, without their parents’ consent. White children could not be bound under the same terms. Elizabeth Turner was one of those children, and with help from the Freedmen’s Bureau, her case came before Chase on a petition for habeas corpus. Chase ordered her released. He held that the arrangement was involuntary servitude prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment, and that the law’s racial distinctions violated the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which guaranteed all citizens the equal benefit of the laws. In a now famous line, he declared that Black Americans were citizens of the United States on the same footing as white Americans. Within a year, the vast majority of Black child apprentices in Maryland had been released, although some state courts kept applying the voided law for several more years. The significance of October 13, 1867 is the idea that citizenship is not something the government can treat differently depending on who you are, and that federal courts will step in when a state uses ordinary-looking legal machinery to undo constitutional rights. Questions about citizenship, and about how the government treats people it views as political adversaries, are at the center of our first story today. Federal agents searched Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home in Washington early Monday. Homeland Security Investigations, the criminal investigations arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, executed a court-authorized search warrant obtained by the Justice Department, which said the search was part of an ongoing criminal investigation. According to sources cited in the reporting, the investigation concerns immigration paperwork filled out by Omar’s late father when she was a child, after the family came to the United States from Somalia. Omar is a naturalized U.S. citizen. This was not a deportation action. Her office called the search “an outrageous abuse of power” and an escalation in the “weaponization of federal law enforcement to target political enemies,” and said she has done nothing wrong. House Democratic leaders called it “deeply disturbing.” The President said he had nothing to do with it, but that officials were looking “very carefully” at Omar. A few legal points. First, a search warrant means a federal judge found probable cause to believe evidence of a crime would be found at the location. That’s a real threshold, but it’s a low one, and it isn’t a finding that anyone is guilty. No charges have been reported. Second, if the investigation centers on paperwork prepared by her father when she was a child, there are serious questions about intent and about the statute of limitations for decades-old filings. The Supreme Court held in Maslenjak v. United States in 2017 that the government can’t strip someone’s citizenship over a false statement in the naturalization process unless the falsehood actually mattered to the decision to grant citizenship. Third, the timing is unusual. Justice Department policy has long discouraged overt investigative steps against a candidate close to an election, to avoid influencing the outcome. Taking this step against a sitting member of Congress less than a month before voting will draw scrutiny regardless of what the evidence shows. US launches immigration raid on Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s home, Fox News reports | Reuters (https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-launches-immigration-raid-democratic-congresswoman-ilhan-omars-home-fox-news-2026-10-12/) · CBS News (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ilhan-omar-immigration-raid-washington-dc/) · Axios (https://www.axios.com/2026/10/12/ilhan-omar-search-immigration) A federal judge in Washington sharply rebuked Justice Department lawyers after crews cut down hundreds of trees at East Potomac Golf Links, a century-old public golf course on federal land managed by the National Park Service. The President announced plans last year to overhaul the course, and the Interior Department says the work will restore its historic character and open up views of nearby monuments. The DC Preservation League sued in February, arguing the project violates environmental and preservation laws. Back in May, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes had required the government to give advance notice of any substantive construction work. Then, over a weekend, crews felled roughly 430 to 500 trees, depending on the report, without notifying the preservation group. At a hearing Monday, the judge said she was “furious” and called the removal “inexcusable.” She asked the government’s lawyers, “On what universe did anyone in your office think this was acceptable?” She said the failure to give notice had “cost the government all of its credibility” in the case. She temporarily halted all tree cutting, including routine maintenance, and said she wants sworn testimony from an Interior Department deputy chief of staff and from the superintendent of the National Mall about what happened. She noted that the only reason she hadn’t started contempt proceedings was that her notice requirement hadn’t been put in a written order. This may sound like a small story compared to others we cover, but it raises something important. Notice requirements exist because some actions can’t be undone. You can’t un-cut a hundred-year-old tree. When the government acts first in a way that makes a court’s eventual ruling meaningless, it undermines the court’s ability to provide any remedy at all. And the judge’s comment about credibility matters, because courts often rely on the government’s representations, and that trust is hard to rebuild once lost. Judge blasts Trump’s DOJ over ‘inexcusable’ tree removal at DC golf course | Reuters (https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/judge-blasts-trumps-doj-over-inexcusable-tree-removal-dc-golf-course-2026-10-12/) · CBS News (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/judge-ana-reyes-justice-department-trees-east-potomac-golf-course/) · WJLA (https://wjla.com/news/local/judge-temporarily-halts-tree-cutting-at-dc-east-potomac-golf-course-trump-renovation-project) And finally, in my column for Bloomberg Tax this week, I look ahead about 17 years, to the day the first Trump Accounts pass into the hands of the young adults they were created for. Trump Accounts work like baby bonds. Eligible U.S.-citizen children born from 2025 through 2028 get a one-time $1,000 federal deposit, families and others can contribute, and taxes on investment growth are generally deferred until withdrawal. Using current birth rates, that’s roughly 14.4 million children and $14.4 billion in seed money, before any investment growth or contributions. My concern is that we’re building a very large target for fraud with an unusual weakness. Many accounts will be set up or claimed by parents almost two decades before the child takes control, and some will be created automatically by the Treasury and sit unclaimed for years. By the time the 2025 group turns 18 around 2043, contact information will be out of date, logins will be long forgotten, and the personal information used to verify identity will have leaked in years of data breaches. And AI-generated fake IDs are already fooling some financial institutions. We’ve seen this before. In 2015, criminals used taxpayer information stolen from elsewhere to pass the IRS’s identity checks for its Get Transcript tool. They didn’t need to hack the IRS to beat it. So I argue the Treasury should plan the handoff now: fresh identity verification that means more than asking the same old questions again, extra security for dormant and never-claimed accounts, protections against last-minute changes to contact or withdrawal information, and a human-reviewed path for beneficiaries who’ve lost access to their original credentials. And Congress should guarantee a right to restoration of unauthorized withdrawals, placing the loss on the institution that approved the transfer, not on the young person whose savings disappeared, with deadlines and appeals so institutions can’t simply deny hard claims. The test of this program won’t be how many accounts get opened. It’ll be whether the people they were opened for can actually get their money without losing it to an impostor. Trump Accounts’ Fraud Vulnerability Calls for Strong Safeguards | Bloomberg Tax (https://news.bloombergtax.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/trump-accounts-fraud-vulnerability-calls-for-strong-safeguards) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe (https://www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

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Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.8 / 5

12 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 66 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

99

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

82

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