A federal appeals court has sharply limited an Atlanta family’s effort to recover damages from the government over a mistaken 2017 FBI raid on their home, holding that their claims against the United States cannot proceed to trial even as claims against the lead agent personally may continue.

The ruling is significant because it draws a familiar but still consequential line in federal civil-rights litigation: suing the government itself is often far harder than suing an individual officer, and sometimes impossible, even when the underlying facts involve an acknowledged error.

The family of Renee Good has filed suit in Minnesota against the United States and federal immigration officials over her death during a January enforcement action in Minneapolis tied to “Operation Metro Surge.” The case is notable not only because it challenges the conduct of officers involved in a fatal operation, but because the complaint reportedly frames the shooting as the foreseeable result of broader immigration-enforcement planning and policy—not merely a split-second field decision.

That framing could make this litigation especially important for lawyers tracking civil-rights claims against federal actors.

The Justice Department has announced a $400 million settlement to cover healthcare costs for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, marking one of the larger recent federal settlements and an important development at the intersection of tribal healthcare, federal funding obligations, and government-liability litigation.

For legal professionals, the size of the resolution is only part of the story.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Division has announced that the United States will pay approximately $17 million to resolve claims brought by nearly 630 plaintiffs arising from the Red Hill jet fuel spills, a significant development in the long-running legal fallout from the Hawaii fuel contamination crisis.

The settlement stands out not only because of the dollar amount, but because it reflects the government’s continuing exposure from one of the military’s most visible environmental disasters in recent years.