Indiana’s top legal stories of 2025

From the immigration crackdown that brought hundreds of detainees to Indiana jails to the firing of public employees for their social media posts on the Charlie Kirk assassination to the Indiana Senate’s rejection of mid-cycle redistricting, the state saw plenty of legal news in 2025.

Here are the state’s Top 10 legal stories as ranked by The Indiana Lawyer staff.

1. Immigration crackdown

Throughout the year, President Donald Trump’s unprecedented crackdown on illegal immigration dominated headlines in legal journals and mainstream media in Indiana and across the nation.

In addition to stirring legal fights over the due process rights of rounded-up detainees, the aggressive enforcement of federal immigration laws brought an increasing number of people apprehended by Immigration and Custom Enforcement officials to several county jails in Indiana.

Later, the federal government reached an agreement with the state of Indiana to house ICE detainees at the Miami Correctional Facility, which the Department of Homeland Security dubbed the Speedway Slammer.

By December, 558 ICE detainees were being held in the Miami facility, a state prison just south of Peru. Nationally, more than 68,000 people are being held by ICE.

Camp Atterbury in Johnson County also has been cited by the U.S. Department of Defense as a place where immigrant detainees could be held.

At the state level, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita also intensified his involvement in immigration matters, filing civil investigative demands for information from 16 businesses and organizations regarding the potential labor trafficking of undocumented immigrants.

Two organizations in Evansville successfully challenged the demands in court, arguing that Rokita had no probable cause to seek such information.

2. Redistricting’s defeat

For months, President Donald Trump, Gov. Mike Braun and their associates pressured Indiana lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional maps to give Republicans a shot at winning all nine of Indiana’s congressional seats, including the two held by Democrats.

Immediately, some Hoosiers questioned the legality of the unprecedented push for mid-decade redistricting, a process that typically only occurs at the beginning of a decade immediately after the U.S. Census. Others questioned what impact such a move would have on voters’ faith in the electoral process.

Throughout the pressure campaign, Indiana Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray, a private practice attorney from Martinsville, maintained there weren’t enough votes in his Republican-dominated chamber to approve new maps.

But supporters of the move were intent on making him prove it. So he eventually agreed to allow a vote on the measure, and the Senate soundly defeated it 31-19.

That made Indiana the only state to deny the president’s personal pleas to change the maps in an effort to help Republicans maintain control of the U.S. House in the 2026 elections.

3. Rokita’s disciplinary case

A three-year feud between Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita and the Indiana Supreme Court disciplinary commission over the ethical boundaries of his fiery political language ended rather quietly.

In October, they reached a settlement that declared a second disciplinary case against Rokita as moot, and the state’s high court agreed.

The second case arose after the commission accused Rokita, the state’s top lawyer, of misleading the Indiana Supreme Court when settling an earlier disciplinary matter.

In the initial case, Rokita was reprimanded for comments he made in 2022 about OB-GYN Dr. Caitlin Bernard, whom he called “an abortion activist acting as a doctor.”

He received the reprimand in November 2023 after he signed a conditional agreement accepting responsibility for his actions and then made what the commission considered to be contradictory public statements.

“I deny and was not found to have violated anyone’s confidentiality or any laws,” Rokita said in a press release immediately after the reprimand was issued. “I was not fined.”

When the second disciplinary case was settled in October, Rokita offered no comment.

4. Addressing the lawyer shortage

After intensive study, the Indiana Supreme Court in October approved a new grant program for lawyers willing to commit to practice in areas of high legal need and embraced several other recommendations from a commission the court appointed to help find solutions to the state’s attorney shortage.

More than half the Indiana’s 92 counties are considered legal deserts, defined by the American Bar Association as having less than one lawyer per 1,000 residents.

Action by the state’s high court sets into motion a suggestion by the Commission on Indiana’s Legal future to provide grants to help lawyers cover overhead costs such as rent, utilities and insurance in addition to startup costs for management and billing software, Westlaw, Lexis and Zoom.

In exchange, the lawyers would have to set up shop in a rural area or legal desert.

Other programs adopted by the court would provide ways to test pilot ways that could deliver some legal services through someone other than an attorney and create a nonprofit law firm model that could help the state’s legal community better serve clients of modest means.

5. Rokita’s anti-DEI policy

In September, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita announced that he would reject state-agency contracts with any law firm that maintains improper diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Rokita says the move is a stand against “unconstitutional” diversity programs that “treat people differently based on skin color” and violate state values.

It’s hard to know if any law firms have been affected by the new policy.

In response to The Lawyer’s questions about the policy’s impact, the attorney general’s office said implementation is ongoing. In an email, the office said it is “closely scrutinizing outside counsel requests to ensure consistency with the policy and state law.”

The state’s largest law firms—many with a history of touting DEI—have declined to comment on Rokita’s policy.

But some have quietly made some moves behind the scenes. Ice Miller, for instance, changed the name of its “chief equity and inclusion” position to “chief of engagement and belonging.”

6. Law firm mergers

Law firm mergers were on the rise nationally in 2025, according to Fairfax Associates. Indiana was no exception.

In January, Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP completed a merger with Denver-based firm Sherman & Howard LLC, adding over 100 attorneys to Taft’s team of attorneys spanning from the Mountain West to Washington D.C.

Taft continued its expansion in June when it completed a merger with Florida-based Mrachek Law. It will add over 100 more attorneys this winter when it completes its merger with Atlanta-founded Morris, Manning & Martin, effective Dec. 31, bringing the total number of Taft attorneys to more than 1,200.

Frost Brown Todd LLP and Krieg DeVault LLP also announced new mergers in October, each with effective dates of Jan. 1, 2026.

And in October, Dentons completed a combination with the Tamrat Assefa Liban Law Offices in Ethiopia.

7. Firings over Charlie Kirk remarks

The fallout from the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk was swift for some outspoken employees.

In Indiana and across the country, people who posted callous or critical comments about Kirk lost their jobs.

At Ball State University, Suzanne Swierc, director of Health Promotion & Advocacy, was fired after writing on Facebook that while Kirk’s killing was tragic, it was also “a reflection of the violence, fear, and hatred he sowed.”

Swierc has filed a federal lawsuit challenging her dismissal, one that free-speech advocates say could clarify the rights of public employees to speak out.

The Indiana Department of Child Services also announced in September that a staffer who posted an insensitive comment about Kirk online was “no longer with the agency.”

8. Death penalty executions

Indiana executed two more men under its death penalty laws in 2025, after resuming the practice in 2024 following more than a 15-year pause.

Roy Ward was put to death in October for the 2001 rape and murder of 15-year-old Stacy Payne in Spencer County.

Benjamin Ritchie was executed in May for the 2000 shooting death of Beech Grove Police Officer William Toney.

The practice resumed in December 2024 when Joseph Corcoran was put to death for the 1997 killings of four men in Fort Wayne.

Indiana’s method of execution is lethal injection, and the high cost of the drug has reopened the debate over whether it is the best method or whether the death penalty is even appropriate.

9. Redistribution of county judges

Indiana lawmakers in April approved a new law that abolishes court posts in some rural counties and transfers them to Hamilton County and other faster-growing locales with more crushing caseloads.

The move eliminates the Blackford County Superior Court and a Monroe County Circuit Court, as well as a magistrate position in Jennings County. (Marion County also loses six unfilled juvenile court magistrate posts.)

Hamilton County, which was identified by a caseload study as having the greatest need for new judges, is a biggest beneficiary of the new law.

Two new superior court judges will be elected in Hamilton County next year, and two new magistrates already have been appointed.

Other additions would be two more full-time magistrates in Elkhart County, one magistrate in Vigo County and one in Lawrence County juvenile court.

10. New federal prosecutors and judge nominee

With the arrival of a new Trump administration also came new appointments for federal prosecutors and judges.

For Indiana, Tom Wheeler and Adam Mildred were confirmed by the U.S. Senate this month as U.S. Attorneys for the Southern and Northern Districts, respectively.

Wheeler has served as interim U.S. attorney since June. He served as acting general counsel at the Department of Education and has also held federal roles as acting assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice, senior adviser to the White House School Safety Commission and counsel to the Secretary of Education.

Mildred has served as a deputy prosecuting attorney in Allen County and was formerly the chief deputy prosecutor in Noble County.

Trump has nominated Justin Olson, a Kroger Gardis & Regas LLP attorney, to fill a federal judge vacancy in the Southern District. He is awaiting confirmation by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Olson currently represents and advises clients on health care fraud and abuse, the False Claims Act enforcement and Controlled Substances Act regulatory compliance and enforcement.

He previously was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, Civil Division. He served as the civil health care fraud coordinator and civil opioid coordinator.•