Public Policy

  • September 17, 2025

    Texas Judge Slashes Suit Over Anti-Sanctuary Law

    A Texas federal judge gutted a suit by local governments and officials challenging a Texas law prohibiting local officials from limiting cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, tossing claims against the state and Gov. Greg Abbott and leaving Attorney General Ken Paxton as the sole state defendant.

  • September 17, 2025

    Satellites Belong In FCC's Enviro Reviews, Agency Told

    The Federal Communications Commission can't justify excluding potentially luminous satellites from environmental reviews keyed to industries under its jurisdiction, a group fighting light pollution said.

  • September 17, 2025

    House Votes To End DC Judicial Nominations Commission

    The U.S. House of Representatives voted 218-211 along party lines on Wednesday to eliminate the commission that vets and picks potential judicial nominees for Washington, D.C.'s local courts.

  • September 17, 2025

    Charter Can't Dodge Cable Royalties In Texas, 5th Circ. Rules

    Charter Communications cannot avoid paying a 3% royalty for the use of cable permits in three Texas cities' rights of way, regardless of a change in state permitting law, the Fifth Circuit ruled Wednesday.

  • September 17, 2025

    Democrats Push Wealth Tax Targeting Billionaires' Assets

    Billionaires would pay higher taxes on their unrealized gains from property, stocks and other valuable assets under legislation reintroduced Wednesday by Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden and other congressional Democrats.

  • September 17, 2025

    Texas Justices Don't Touch Block Of Local Pot Amnesty Law

    The Texas Supreme Court will not review an appellate panel's decision blocking the city of San Marcos from going forward with a voter-approved ordinance that limited local police from enforcing laws on low-level marijuana offenses.

  • September 17, 2025

    DOJ & Google Going To Trial, Again, On Ad Tech Remedies

    The Justice Department goes to trial next week to try breaking up Google's advertising placement technology business after a Virginia federal court declared the company an illegal monopolist in ad tech.

  • September 17, 2025

    IRS-ICE Pact Allows For Mass Tax Data Swaps, DC Circ. Told

    An information sharing agreement between the IRS and immigration enforcement agencies allows for disclosure of confidential tax information on a mass scale, as evidenced by an IRS official's declaration in a taxpayer group's suit, immigration advocacy groups challenging the agreement told the D.C. Circuit on Wednesday.

  • September 17, 2025

    SEC Policy Shift Could Foreclose Some Investor Class Actions

    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission issued a policy statement Wednesday that allows the use of mandatory arbitration by new publicly traded companies as its chief seeks to "make IPOs great again," but Democrats warned the move could shut the door to shareholder class actions.

  • September 17, 2025

    Judge Won't Let Denver Slip Suit Over Bans On Gas Appliances

    A Colorado federal judge partially granted environmentalist group Sierra Club's bid to dismiss a suit filed by a coalition of industry trade groups suing Denver over the city's restrictions on certain natural gas appliances.

  • September 17, 2025

    USTR Seeks Feedback On USMCA In Advance Of Joint Review

    The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is seeking comments on the effectiveness of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement in advance of next year's joint review of the regional trade agreement, it has announced.

  • September 17, 2025

    Ute Tribe Land Dispute Back In Court After 8-Year Stay

    A Utah federal judge on Wednesday lifted an eight-year stay in a decade-long feud over criminal prosecutions within the Ute Tribe's reservation boundaries, allowing the parties to litigate a sole issue in the case over the status of split estate surface lands.

  • September 17, 2025

    Boston Mayor Accused Of Firing Staffer To Shield Ally

    The former chief of staff for Boston's police accountability office alleged in a lawsuit launched in state court Wednesday that Mayor Michelle Wu wrongfully fired her last spring to protect a key political ally from accusations of sexual harassment.

  • September 17, 2025

    EXIM Bank Wants Suit Over $20B Mozambique LNG Project Axed

    The Export-Import Bank of the United States is asking a D.C. federal judge to toss green groups' effort to block $4.7 billion in financing for a liquefied natural gas project in Mozambique led by TotalEnergies SE.

  • September 17, 2025

    7th Circ. Pick Shrugs Off Conservative Group's Opposition

    During her confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Rebecca Taibleson, a federal prosecutor in Wisconsin tapped for the Seventh Circuit, fended off opposition to her nomination from conservative groups, antipathy that the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee called a "new low" for the committee.

  • September 17, 2025

    Ga. City, Ex-Court Admin Seek Quick Wins In Retaliation Case

    A Georgia city and its former municipal court administrator have each asked a federal judge for wins in a whistleblower suit the administrator brought alleging she had been unlawfully fired in retaliation for reporting a city council member's attempt to pressure the court for a favor.

  • September 17, 2025

    Calif. Residents Look To Block Tribe's Recognition, Casino

    A group of residents and a nonprofit are seeking an expedited order that would block a decision by the Interior Department to give federal recognition to California's Ione Band of Miwok Indians, arguing the federal government is delaying the case to make sure construction of the tribe's casino is completed.

  • September 17, 2025

    FTC Sends White House List Of Regulations For Deletion

    The Federal Trade Commission provided the White House with a report on Wednesday recommending that more than 125 regulations from agencies across the federal government be modified or deleted because they create barriers to competition.

  • September 17, 2025

    Nonprofit Loses TM Injunction Bid Against 'Making PA Better'

    A Pennsylvania federal judge has declined to bar the Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association from using the phrase "Making PA Better" on its website in a trademark infringement case brought by a nonprofit, saying neither of the parties are engaged in commercial activity.

  • September 17, 2025

    Womble Bond Hires Longtime Clifford Chance Leader In DC

    Womble Bond Dickinson LLP has hired a career Clifford Chance LLP lawyer in Washington who served in a number of leadership roles with the firm in his more than 35 years there, including most recently as the global co-head of its risk team and leader of its U.S. regulatory investigations and financial crime group.

  • September 17, 2025

    NCDOT Dodges Liability In Fatal Snowstorm Accident

    The North Carolina Department of Transportation was freed Wednesday from having to contribute to wrongful death settlements of over $1.6 million after a North Carolina Court of Appeals panel found the department to be immune under the Emergency Management Act.

  • September 17, 2025

    Insurer Says Parkland Mass Shooting Was Multiple Occurrences

    Evanston Insurance Co. told the Eleventh Circuit on Wednesday that a lower court erred when it said the term "occurrences" in an excess policy for the Broward Sheriff's Office was ambiguous and granted a win to the insured, which argued the 2018 mass shooting at a Parkland, Florida, school was one occurrence, not several.

  • September 17, 2025

    Lawmakers Ask Trump To Push UK To Ax Digital Services Tax

    Twenty-two Republican House lawmakers asked President Donald Trump to secure a commitment from the U.K. to remove its digital services tax while he's visiting the country and to reopen a trade investigation into the tax if the British government doesn't oblige.

  • September 17, 2025

    Ex-CDC Head Says RFK Jr. Urged Vax Schedule Rubber Stamp

    Susan Monarez, the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told federal lawmakers on Wednesday she was abruptly fired just weeks into her tenure for "holding the line on scientific integrity."

  • September 17, 2025

    Pot Entrepreneur Pushes 4th Circ. To Rehear Licensing Fight

    A California cannabis entrepreneur has asked the Fourth Circuit to rehear her case after a panel rejected her bid to upend Maryland's marijuana social equity licensing program, arguing that the appellate judges' ruling turned on multiple errors of law and fact.

Expert Analysis

  • Opinion

    Congress Must Resolve PSLRA Issue For Section 11 Litigants

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    By establishing a uniform judgment reduction credit for all defendants in cases involving Section 11 of the Securities Act, Congress could remove unnecessary statutory ambiguity from the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act and enable litigants to price potential settlements with greater certainty, say attorneys at Sidley.

  • Stablecoin Committee Promotes Uniformity But May Fall Short

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    While the Genius Act's establishment of the Stablecoin Certification Review Committee will provide private stablecoin issuers with more consistent standards, fragmentation remains due to the disparate regulatory approaches taken by different states, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.

  • FTC's Reseller Suit Highlights Larger Ticket Platform Issues

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    Taken together, the recent Federal Trade Commission lawsuit and Ticketmaster's recent antitrust woes demonstrate that federal enforcers are testing the resilience of antitrust and consumer-protection frameworks in an evolving, tech-driven marketplace, says Thomas Stratmann at George Mason University.

  • Agentic AI Puts A New Twist On Attorney Ethics Obligations

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    As lawyers increasingly use autonomous artificial intelligence agents, disciplinary authorities must decide whether attorney responsibility for an AI-caused legal ethics violation is personal or supervisory, and firms must enact strong policies regarding agentic AI use and supervision, says Grace Wynn at HWG.

  • Parsing Trump Admin's First 6 Months Of SEC Enforcement

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    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's enforcement results for the first six months of the Trump administration show substantially fewer new enforcement actions compared to the same period under the previous administration, but indicate a clear focus on traditional fraud schemes affecting retail investors, say attorneys at King & Spalding.

  • HSR Compliance Remains A Priority From Biden To Trump

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    Several new enforcement actions from the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice illustrate that rigorous attention to Hart-Scott-Rodino Act compliance has become a critical component of the U.S. merger review process, even amid the political transition from the Biden to Trump administrations, say attorneys at Baker McKenzie.

  • Cos. Face EU, US Regulatory Tension On Many Fronts

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    When the European Union sets stringent standards, companies seeking to operate in the international marketplace must conform to them, or else concede opportunities — but with the current U.S. administration pushing hard to roll back regulations, global companies face an increasing tension over which standards to follow, say attorneys at Baker McKenzie.

  • How EU Is Tweaking Enviro Laws After US Trade Deal

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    While a recent joint statement from the European Union and the U.S. in the wake of their trade deal does not mention special treatment for U.S. companies, the EU's ongoing commitment to streamline its sustainability legislation suggests an openness to addressing concerns raised by the U.S., say attorneys at Debevoise.

  • The Consequences Of OCC's Pivot On Disparate Impact

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    The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's recent move to stop scrutinizing facially neutral lending policies that disproportionately affect a protected group reflects the administration's ongoing shift in assessing discrimination, though this change may not be enough to dissuade claims by states or private plaintiffs, says Travis Nelson at Polsinelli.

  • FDA Transparency Plans Raise Investor Disclosure Red Flags

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    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s recently announced intent to publish complete response letters for unapproved drugs and devices implicates certain investor disclosure requirements under securities laws, making it necessary for life sciences and biotech companies to adopt robust controls going forward, say attorneys at Arnold & Porter.

  • Rising USCIS Denials May Signal Reverse On Signature Policy

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    Increasingly, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services appears to be issuing denials and requests for evidence in cases where petitioners digitally affix handwritten signatures to paper-based petitions, upending a long-standing practice with potentially grave consequences for applicants, says Sherry Neal at Corporate Immigration.

  • Series

    Being A Professional Wrestler Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Pursuing my childhood dream of being a professional wrestler has taught me important legal career lessons about communication, adaptability, oral advocacy and professionalism, says Christopher Freiberg at Midwest Disability.

  • 2 Calif. Cases Could Reshape Future Of Trap-And-Trace Suits

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    A California federal judge's recent dismissal of two California Invasion of Privacy Act cases demonstrates an inherent contradiction in pen register and trap-and-trace claims, teeing up a Ninth Circuit appeal that could either breathe new life into such claims or put an end to them outright, says Matthew Pearson at Womble Bond.

  • How FDIC Appeals Plan Squares With Fed, OCC Processes

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    The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s recent proposal to revise its appeals process merits a fresh comparison to the appeals systems of the Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and would provide institutions with greater transparency and independence, say attorneys at Alston & Bird.

  • How GILTI Reform Affects M&A Golden Parachute Planning

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    Deal teams should evaluate the effect of a recent seemingly technical change to U.S. international tax law on the golden parachute analysis that often plays a critical part of many corporate transactions to avoid underestimating its impact on an acquirer's worldwide taxable income following a triggering transaction, say attorneys at MoFo.

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