The court refused to vacate an award that placed graduate students in a bargaining unit without prior NLRB classification, calling arbitration awards 'nearly impervious to judicial oversight.'
The panel held that Massachusetts fraudulent-concealment tolling did not save Boston’s public-nuisance claim against OptumRx and Express Scripts because public litigation, reports and other materials gave the city the means to investigate alleged PBM wrongdoing before the limitations period expired.
The panel held that the FAA's mandatory language does not permit a district court to avoid ruling on a motion to compel arbitration by administratively closing the case.
The First Circuit vacated the BIA's denial of asylum for a Honduran man, ruling that resistance to gangs can constitute a political opinion depending on the context.
The panel said the dog-import rule fits the CDC's inspection authority and was rationally tied to preventing rabies and vaccination-document fraud.
The panel said a Massachusetts defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in Freenet Opennet requests that law enforcement received and logged through a peer-to-peer monitoring tool.
The panel said a former DEA employee failed to show that her firing for insubordination and alleged lack of candor was a pretext for retaliation.
The panel said two Massachusetts cocaine convictions did not qualify as federal guideline controlled substance offenses because the state definition was broader than the federal drug schedules.
The First Circuit ordered Maine officials to face a preliminary injunction against one religious-expression rule while largely rejecting St. Dominic Academy's bid to block other anti-discrimination requirements tied to public tuition funding.
The panel said landowners' challenge to a 15% administrative fee on interest from court-held condemnation funds was void because it ran into Puerto Rico's Title III automatic stay.