The following published opinions were released by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on June 24, 2008:

• Samnorwood Independent School District v. Texas Education Agency (Garwood, Garza, Benavides, JJ.; opinion by Garwood, J.). Reversing and rendering with regard to the application of a modified thirty-six-year-old desegregation order to cover two school districts that were not part of the original desegregation lawsuit and that voluntarily desegregated in the 1960s prior to the institution of the lawsuit. The Fifth Circuit held, “[O]ur opinion today does not give the School Districts a license to discriminate. If evidence arises that either of these school districts is acting with discriminatory intent when accepting or rejecting transfer students, then they would be subject to suit and a remedy would then be in order to correct the constitutional violation. Our decision today only holds that the prophylactic provisions created by the Modified Order to remedy the segregative conduct on the part of TEA and all-black schools in East Texas should not be imposed on these two panhandle school districts that had long previously already desegregated and have never since been found to have acted with segregative intent.” Slip op. at 17.
• U.S. v. Williamson (King, Higginbotham, Southwick, JJ., opinion by Higginbotham, J.). The defendant was charged with possession of more than fifty grams of crack cocaine; during the jury venire, the court asked if anyone in the venire had any experience involving themselves or a family member or close friend related to possession or use of illegal drugs; thirteen of the venire members, including the only two black venire members, raised their hands. In follow-up questions, the government focused its drug participation follow-up questions only on the two black venire members, and subsequently used two of his peremptory strikes against them. The defendant’s counsel raised a Batson objection, which was overruled. The Fifth Circuit held that the government’s claim that the strikes were for race-neutral reasons faltered under closer examination, and reversed and rendered for a new trial.
• U.S. v. Alcoa, Inc. (King, Higginbotham, Southwick, JJ.; opinion by Higginbotham, J.). After a suit by citizen groups and the U.S. over Clean Air Act violations by Alcoa in operation of a power generation facility for its aluminum plant in central Texas, the court entered a consent decree whereby Alcoa would construct a new power generation facility. After Alcoa failed to meet the deadline for operation of the new facility, over the citizen groups’ objections the court allowed for Alcoa to extend the operational deadline pursuant to a stipulated order with the government, though it did include $1.8 million in fines, stricter emissions limits, and the inclusion of more pollution control devices for the resulting facility. The citizen groups appealed. The Fifth Circuit affirmed, rejected the citizen groups’ argument that the approved stipulated order was an unconsented-to modification of the consent decree rather than a remedy for Alcoa’s failure to abide by the consent decree. The Court examined its precedents and held that “district courts have wide discretion to enforce decrees and to implement remedies for decree violations.” Slip op. at 12. The Court additionally held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in fashioning the remedy.