What happened
On 28 April 2025 Judge Robert Pitman of the Western District of Texas enters an Amended Final Judgment in Van Loon v. Department of the Treasury, No. 1:23-cv-312-RP. The designation of the Tornado Cash smart contracts "is unlawful and is therefore set aside... and that Defendants are permanently enjoined from enforcing it" (Dkt 111).
The entry it concerns had already gone, and the order of events is the story (docket):
- 26 November 2024. The Fifth Circuit reverses and remands with instructions to grant partial summary judgment for the plaintiffs (122 F.4th 549). It vacates nothing itself.
- 21 January 2025. The mandate issues. The government had an unopposed extension to seek rehearing to 17 January and filed nothing: no rehearing, no en banc, no certiorari.
- 17 March 2025. Treasury asks for remand without vacatur or a stay, calls the holding "narrow", warns of "disruptive consequences" for national security, and reserves that "vacatur is not an available remedy under the APA" (Dkt 106, docketed 18 March).
- 21 March 2025. OFAC deletes one SDN entry: the entity TORNADO CASH, "Website tornado.cash", and 90 Ethereum addresses, listed under the [DPRK3] and [CYBER2] programs. Citing "the novel legal and policy issues raised by use of financial sanctions against... activity occurring within evolving technology and legal environments", Treasury says it has "exercised our discretion to remove the economic sanctions". It then files a notice that Tornado Cash "is no longer subject to sanctions... and this matter is now moot" (Dkt 107).
What it changes
It settles who controls the gap between a ruling and a remedy. An appellate holding is a statement of law: it does not erase an entry from a list, and until judgment is entered there is nothing enforceable to hold the agency to.
Treasury moved into that gap first, voluntarily, 38 days before any order set the designation aside, and then tried to use its own compliance to remove the court's power to enter judgment at all. Pitman refuses (Dkt 110). The dispute is capable of repetition while evading review, and the government "instead used that time to seek to moot the issue by changing the relevant facts via additional agency action they called an exercise of 'discretion'", which under FBI v. Fikre will not do, because "a federal court's constitutional authority cannot be so readily manipulated". On the second prong: "Defendants do not suggest they will not sanction Tornado Cash again, and they may seek to 'reenact[] precisely the same [designation]' in the future."
That is the mechanism worth keeping. Relief you receive as a favour can be withdrawn as a favour. Only a judgment binds.
What it does not change
The injunction reaches that designation and nothing else. It does not bar future designations and does not reach mutable smart contracts. The First Amendment counts, 2 and 3, are denied, with summary judgment going to the government: there is no free-speech holding here.
OFAC keeps every authority it had. Individuals stay sanctionable, and Roman Semenov was not delisted: his entry lost the cyber tag and kept the North Korea one, and his addresses, passport, emails and aliases are unchanged. Treasury says it remains "deeply concerned" about hacking and money laundering attributed to North Korea, and that "U.S. persons should exercise caution before engaging in transactions that present such risks." Delisted is not blessed.
Context
The 2022 designation put addresses holding immutable code on a list built for parties who can comply or refuse. The Fifth Circuit held in November 2024 that such contracts are not property under the statute. That is what is now settled, and only within the Fifth Circuit. Everything around it stays open: mutable contracts, relayers, front ends, and whether Tornado Cash is an entity at all. A designation could be written again on a different theory, which is why the plaintiffs needed a judgment rather than a moot case and the agency's goodwill.