Legal Sidebari
Congressional Court Watcher: Circuit Splits
from February 2025
Updated April 7, 2025
The U.S. Courts of Appeals for the thirteen “circuits” issue thousands of precedential decisions each year.
Because relatively few of these decisions are ultimately reviewed by the Supreme Court, the U.S. Courts
of Appeals are often the last word on consequential legal questions. The federal appellate courts
sometimes reach different conclusions on the same issue of federal law, causing a “split” among the
circuits that leads to the non-uniform application of federal law among similarly situated litigants.
This Legal Sidebar discusses circuit splits that emerged or widened following decisions from the last
month on matters relevant to Congress. The Sidebar does not address every circuit split that developed or
widened during this period. Selected cases typically involve judicial disagreement over the interpretation
or validity of federal statutes and regulations, or constitutional issues relevant to Congress’s lawmaking
and oversight functions. The Sidebar only includes cases where an appellate court’s controlling opinion
recognizes a split among the circuits on a key legal issue resolved in the opinion. This Sidebar refers to
each U.S. Court of Appeals by its number or descriptor (e.g., “D.C. Circuit” for “U.S. Court of Appeals
for the D.C. Circuit”).
Some cases identified in this Sidebar, or the legal questions they address, are examined in other CRS
general distribution products. Members of Congress and congressional staff may click here to subscribe to
the CRS Legal Update and receive regular notifications of new products and upcoming seminars by CRS
attorneys.
• Criminal Law & Procedure: The Third Circuit rejected a criminal defendant’s facial
and as-applied constitutional challenges to his international sex tourism conviction under
18 U.S.C. § 2423(c) (barring U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents from engaging
in illicit sexual conduct in foreign countries). The panel held that Section 2423(c) was a
lawful exercise of Congress’s power under the Foreign Commerce Clause and the
Necessary and Proper Clause. In so doing, the panel disagreed with the Sixth Circuit and
joined the majority of reviewing circuit courts in ruling that the Constitution grants
Congress more expansive power to regulate foreign commerce than interstate commerce.
Still, the Third Circuit held that the defendant’s convictions would be constitutionally
permissible even under the standard employed in interstate commerce cases, because
although Section 2423(c) as applied to the defendant involved noncommercial conduct,
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the provision regulates channels of foreign commerce and activities that substantially
affect foreign commerce. (United States v. Clay).
• Firearms: A Tenth Circuit panel reaffirmed an earlier decision that 18 U.S.C.
§ 922(g)(1), which bans the possession of firearms by most felons, does not violate the
Second Amendment regardless of whether the felony involves a non-violent offense. The
court’s earlier ruling had been vacated and remanded by the Supreme Court for
reconsideration in light of the Supreme Court’s intervening decision in the 2023 case of
United States v. Rahimi, which expounded upon text-and-history test used by the Court to
assess whether a law violates the Second Amendment. On remand, the circuit panel now
held that Rahimi did not abrogate prior circuit precedent upholding Section 922(g)(1). In
finding Section 922(g)(1) constitutional, that earlier precedent had relied on the Supreme
Court’s statement in its 2008 decision in Heller v. District of Columbia that its
recognition of an individual right to bear arms under the Second Amendment did not
displace “longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons.” The Tenth
Circuit noted disagreement with the Sixth Circuit’s determination that its Heller-based
precedent was no longer binding in a Second Amendment challenge to Section 922(g)(1),
even though after employing the Supreme Court’s text-and-history standard as described
in Rahimi, the Sixth Circuit similarly found Section 922(g)(1) to be constitutional
(Vincent v. Bondi).
• Health: The First Circuit widened a circuit split over the interplay between the Anti-
Kickback Statute (AKS) and the False Claims Act (FCA). The AKS includes a criminal
prohibition against certain quid pro quo arrangements involving federal health care
programs. The statute also provides that a claim seeking payment from a federal health
care program “that includes items or services resulting from a violation” of the AKS is a
false or fraudulent claim giving rise to liability under the FCA. The First Circuit joined
the Sixth and Eighth Circuits in interpreting the AKS’s “resulting from” language as
establishing a “but-for” causation standard for FCA liability, where the government must
prove that the AKS violation actually caused the delivery of medical items or services.
The panel disagreed with the Third Circuit’s view that FCA liability only requires a
sufficient causal connection between the AKS violation and the provision of medical
items or services (United States v. Regeneron Pharms., Inc.).
• Religion: The Eighth Circuit considered claims brought by a prisoner under the Religious
Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) against a county and a county jail
administrator in her individual capacity. RLUIPA generally prohibits a “government”
from imposing a “substantial burden on the religious exercise of a person residing in or
confined to an institution,” and authorizes suits seeking “appropriate relief.” In deciding
whether RLUIPA permits claims for money damages, the court observed that RLUIPA
was enacted under Congress’s Spending Clause authority, and that conditions in Spending
Clause legislation must be spelled out unambiguously. Splitting with the Sixth Circuit,
the panel held the term “appropriate relief” under RLUIPA had sufficient clarity to
encompass the recovery of money damages. While concluding that the prisoner’s
RLUIPA claim for money damages against the county could proceed, the Eighth Circuit
nonetheless held RLUIPA’s application against non-recipients of federal funds who were
acting in their individual capacities exceeded Congress’s spending power. The court
therefore ruled that the prisoner’s RLUIPA suit against the jail administrator could not
proceed (Barnett v. Short).
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Author Information
Michael John Garcia
Deputy Assistant Director/ALD
Congressional Research Service 4
Disclaimer
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