(Subscription required) A federal judge on Wednesday refused to order California election officials to sequester any ballots cast by some 20,000 individuals the federal government says may be noncitizens. In a 26-page order, U.S. District Judge David Carter of California’s Central District said the Trump administration’s demand violates longstanding constitutional principles giving states the primary authority to conduct elections.

On September 17, Pacific High School students and staff gathered for a special assembly as Justice Corey G. Lee, Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District, Division Two, personally presented the school with the 2026 California Civic Learning Award of Distinction.

Actress Leah Remini is heading toward trial in her defamation and harassment suit against the Church of Scientology, which called her a liar and an abuser of aging relatives after she ended nearly 40 years of church membership in 2013. A state appeals court narrowed Remini’s lawsuit in July, saying some of the post-2013 slurs she attributed to church officials — such as calling her a “religious bigot” and a “one-woman hate machine” — were not the types of factual accusations that can constitute libel.

The parents of a woman who was found dead in her Seattle apartment have filed a complaint in San Francisco Superior Court against the Bay Area-based OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, accusing the defendants of engaging in the unauthorized practice of medicine and producing a defective product based on allegations that ChatGPT encouraged their daughter to taper off a life-saving epilepsy medication, causing her demise.