Four years after lawsuits were first filed by Tybee Alliance, residents, property owners and city leadership gathered in Courtroom 4B of the Eugene H. Gadsden Courthouse to hear verbal arguments on the constitutionality of Tybee Island’s short-term vacation rental ordinance. Tybee Alliance, a group of property management companies and STVR owners, filed a motion for summary judgment in August 2025, seeking a decision on the claim that Tybee’s STVR ordinance is unenforceable because it violates state codes limiting municipal powers on the regulation of residential rental properties. The motion also asked for a permanent injunction barring the enforcement of the ordinance, preventing any further enforcement of STVRs in their entirety. The City of Tybee Island also filed a motion for summary judgment in November 2025, stating that the defendants are asking for the court to curtail access to information the city is entitled to. This case, attorney Patrick Connell said in his argument on Jan. 7, is about power. The City of Tybee first introduced STVR regulations in May 2016 with the approval of its first ordinance, which established mandatory registration and an occupational tax certificate for STVRs. In the intervening decade, the ordinance has been amended 17 times, including most recently in June 2024, which further limited STVRs in residential areas by dissolving those permits upon sale or transfer of the properties. The lawsuits were prompted by an amendment passed by the city in October 2022 that banned new rentals in Tybee’s residential neighborhoods, which make up 80% of the island's 3.2 square miles. Tybee’s regulations on STVRs include requiring registration of STVRs in areas that are not in the R-1, R-1-B or R-2 zones, renewing registrations annually, submitting an occupational tax certificate to obtain a permit, and allowing the city to revoke STVR permits if properties aren’t rented for at least 60 days at "full market value" during the previous year. Tybee Alliance argues the city is violating two Georgia codes, O.C.G.A. § 36-74-30(b) and O.C.G.A. § 44-7-19, One code prohibits local governments from requiring registration or conducting inspections of residential rental property unless there is probable cause to believe there has been violations of applicable codes. The other code prohibits local governments from regulating rent amounts for privately owned residential properties. Both sides also spent time contending with Dillon’s Rule, which is a legal principle that asserts local governments in the U.S. can only exercise powers explicitly granted to them by the government. Representatives for Tybee Alliance suggested that because there is no specific rule granting the registration of short-term rental properties, that it was not something that they could do. The basis of Tybee’s verbal argument centered on two of those provisions: hotel-motel excise taxes and zoning. Zoning is defined as a means for local governments to provide a set of regulations that govern how property can or cannot be used in specific geographic locations. Excise taxes are taxes imposed by the government on the sale of specific goods and services, in this case hotel and motels or lodging such as short-term vacation rentals. City of Tybee Island Attorney Bubba Hughes argued that the state grants cities the power to collect these taxes, and the storing of information is necessary or central to collecting these taxes. Tybee’s representatives also argued that short-term rentals were more in line with commercial properties, hotels and motels with innkeepers and guests, than with residential rental properties, which they clarified as a landlord-and-tenant relationship. Thompson said the plaintiffs wanted the court to determine that residential rental properties meant something different. They also said the city did not impose rent regulations as plaintiffs suggested. Superior Court Judge Christopher K. Middleton heard the arguments and will make a ruling in the coming weeks.

The Trump administration cannot require hospitals serving low-income Americans to pay full price upfront for the first 10 medications to become subject to Medicare drug price negotiations and wait for rebates, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Jan. 7. A three-judge panel of the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a request by President Donald Trump's administration to put on hold an injunction a judge in Maine issued at the behest of the American Hospital Association and several healthcare providers that blocked the new program. The panel said the Health Resources and Services Administration's program upended a decades-long practice of providing safety-net hospitals serving rural and low-income communities with upfront discounts to buy prescription drugs. The judges pointed to a lack of evidence that the agency considered the impact the program would have on hospitals, who said the plan would saddle them with hundreds of millions of dollars in new costs. Rich Pollack, the head of the American Hospital Association, in a statement welcomed the ruling, saying the program "would have a devastating effect on America’s most vulnerable patients and communities, and the hospitals that serve them." The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the agency, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Inflation Reduction Act, a 2022 law enacted under Biden, allowed the government to negotiate a maximum fair price that Medicare, the healthcare program for people aged 65 and older or those with disabilities, would pay for certain costly drugs. State Medicaid programs, which provide health insurance for low-income Americans in collaboration with the federal government, receive a rebate to ensure they only pay the Medicare-negotiated price on behalf of qualifying patients. The first 10 drugs to be subject to negotiations include the blood thinner Eliquis sold by Pfizer and Bristol Myers Squibb; Johnson & Johnson's rival medication Xarelto; and Merck & Co's diabetes drug Januvia. Several of the medications were already subject to the federal 340B Drug Pricing Program, which for decades has required drugmakers seeking Medicaid and Medicare coverage for their drugs to provide upfront discounts to safety-net healthcare providers. HRSA said its 340B Rebate Model Pilot Program, which it announced in July, was intended to help drugmakers avoid duplicate price concessions to hospitals, which they were allowed to avoid under the IRA. Drug companies under the pilot program could charge hospitals their products' wholesale prices and issue rebates later to reflect their ultimate discount. The American Hospital Association sued last month, saying the pilot program was adopted in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. U.S. District Judge Lance Walker agreed and issued an injunction on Dec. 29 that blocked the planned Jan. 1 implementation.

A U.S. appeals court on Jan. 6 appeared inclined to allow lawsuits alleging major social media platforms were designed to be addictive for young users to proceed, as several judges questioned whether it was too early to consider whether the companies are immune from such claims. Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms and other social media companies urged a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse rulings forcing them to face more than 2,200 lawsuits. The companies, which also include Snapchat and parent Snap Inc., YouTube and parent Alphabet Inc. and TikTok and parent ByteDance, argue that a federal law known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 shields them from liability stemming from what is posted on their sites, including allegations they failed to warn the public about the addictive nature of their platforms. Filed by states, municipalities, school districts and individuals, the lawsuits allege that social media has contributed to a wave of depression, anxiety and body image issues in children, creating a mental health emergency among American youth in recent years. The cases, which have been centralized before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, seek damages, penalties and restitution from the companies. The companies are appealing Rogers’ orders in 2023 and 2024 that largely allowed the litigation to move forward. An attorney for Meta, which led the companies' appeal, faced skeptical questions from all three of the judges on the panel, who questioned whether it was appropriate for the appeals court to weigh in at this early stage in the case, as Meta was requesting. Most appeals come after a court has made a conclusive, final decision in a case, the judges said. Meta attorney James Rouhandeh responded that Rogers' orders were conclusive because they force Meta to defend against the litigation. "It would be an enormous thing to require defendants to have to defend these types of suits," especially when they are precluded by Section 230, Rouhandeh said. Circuit Judge Jacqueline Nguyen, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama, said Rogers had indicated in her orders that she was open to considering the companies' argument that they are shielded from liability later in the litigation. All three of the judges also questioned Meta's argument that Section 230 provides the companies with immunity from all lawsuits. The plaintiffs argued that Section 230 doesn't cover the claims in the lawsuits because it only protects against liability related to content published by third parties on the websites. "Here our complaints are about features that they can remedy without looking at any third party content at all," Shannon Stevenson, the solicitor general of Colorado who is representing the states that have sued, told the panel. Meta's argument that Section 230 shields the company from all the plaintiffs' claims isn't borne out in the statute's language, Nguyen told Rouhandeh. "When Congress wants to give immunity from suit, it knows how to say that," Nguyen said. Circuit Judge Mark Bennett, an appointee of President Donald Trump, and U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto of the Eastern District of New York, sitting by designation, who was appointed by Republican former President George W. Bush, were also on the panel. The case is People of the State of California v. Meta Platforms Inc, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 24-7032.