Karen L. Henderson

It was just a one-page order with the outcome, so we won't know.

That was Judge Karen Henderson who, um, said that she would have ruled otherwise.

We don't know her reasoning because she didn't write separately on it.

Did a district court judge ever rule on this, or was it straight to the appeals court?

He was trying to sort of establish, I think, the same idea of maybe it wasn't all that clear to everyone what the word "remove" went-- meant, 'cause that's a lot of what this turns on.

And then I would say that with the Democratic-appointed justices or judges, and it's also worth noting that Judge Henderson was not there, although she will be participating in the decision, and it-- that's important to a certain extent because she's a Republican-appointed judge, but not a Trump-appointed judge.

She's a H.W. Bush-appointed judge who's generally fairly conservative, but has gone against the administration in some...

Even last week, we talked about her going against the administration in the Anthropic case.

Those are the Trump-appointed judges.

Um, and there are six that have said this should go forward.

Um, and the two left were Srinivasan, the chief judge, and Henderson, as, as Molly mentioned, w- who wasn't present.

Um, and Srinivasan did ask some very pointed questions of the, uh, of Brett Shumate, the, uh, um, uh, arguing for the government, uh, the, the head of the civil division, trying to say, "Look, if, if there had been only the Judge Boasberg's oral order in the courtroom, um, uh, the alleged ambiguity comes from a written order afterwards and whether it, uh, was, uh, uh, uh, where he, which he prefaces with, as we discussed earlier," and then, uh, uh, and the question is, is there ambigu- s- uh, uh, uh, objective ambiguity in that little squib? But, uh, uh, Srinivasan was saying, "Suppose it had just been the oral order.

And so I suspect there was a dissent from the third judge at the D.C.

Circuit, Karen Henderson, also a Republican-appointed judge.

She dissented on the statutory interpretation.

I think there's a good chance that Anthropic appeals that decision to the en banc D.C.

Good morning, counsel.

Uh, Judge Henderson will consider this case based on the briefing submitted and the arguments delivered today.

Mr. Shumate, please proceed when you're ready.

Good morning, Your Honors.

We knew there were three judges that were, uh, the, the Trump appointees I mentioned, who were opposed.

We didn't know where Srinivasan stood, who's the chief judge, and we didn't know where Judge Henderson stood, Karen LeCraft Henderson, um, who, uh-

And we still don't

And we still don't 'cause she wasn't there today, but she's going to participate in the outcome.

But yeah, no, it was, uh, grander than I'd realized they had in there, so.

Yeah, it's a, it's a cool room.

And, uh, so how many judges were there in addition to the nonpre- the brooding omnipresence of Karen LeCraft Henderson?

Okay, okay, yeah.

This was, um, the pan-- It was a two-to-one split panel.

Um, the majority was, uh, Naomi Rao and Greg Katsas, um, uh, both Trump appointees, and the dissenter was Karen LeCraft Henderson, who is also normally, uh, uh, very, uh, uh, conservative.

Uh, she's a, um, George H.W. Bush appointee to the appellate court and, uh, I think Reagan appointed her to the district court originally.

Um, and it involves, you know, there are these two statutes that, um, uh, relate to supply chain risk, this con- concept for...

Not subvert, but manipulate.

Now, to, uh, t-to, to many people [chuckles], uh, th-those are both describing, uh, so-some very m-malicious and sinister conduct, which was not present with Anthropic, which was just a sort of an anodyne contract dispute.

Um, but, uh, uh, and, a-a-and if, uh-uh-uh-and, and that ind-indeed is, is the, uh, how Henderson interpreted it, but the majority, uh, said that the word adversary was critical and, uh, similarly that the, uh, word subvert was, m-mm, uh, uh, significant.

So, uh, th-they found that, uh, um, the absence of the word adversary in this statute, the absence of the word subvert, that all that was needed here was manipulation and, um, uh, it didn't require a malicious purpose.