Public Policy

  • June 06, 2024

    Harvey Weinstein Bill Won't Become NY Law This Year

    A New York state bill that would have made evidence of past sexual offenses explicitly admissible in sex crime trials — inspired by Harvey Weinstein's recent rape conviction reversal — has fizzled out in the state Assembly following its quick passage in the state Senate, New York legislators told Law360 Thursday.

  • June 06, 2024

    Wash. High Court Will Review Gun Magazine Law

    The Washington state Supreme Court said Thursday it will review a trial court ruling that the state's ban on sales of large-capacity magazines for firearms is unconstitutional.

  • June 06, 2024

    Senate Panel To Weigh Proposal For FCC Spectrum Auctions

    A key Senate committee plans next week to take up Democratic legislation to renew the Federal Communications Commission's authority to auction the airwaves and use future revenues to pay for agency-related national priorities, the committee's chair announced Thursday.

  • June 06, 2024

    GOP Sens. Attack FCC Plan For AI Political Ad Disclosure

    Four Republican senators on Thursday lambasted the Federal Communications Commission chair's recent proposal to consider if the agency needs new rules to disclose the use of artificial intelligence in radio and TV political advertising, saying such rules are out of the commission's authority and would confuse voters.

  • June 06, 2024

    Wash. Justices To Review Spokane Homeless Camp Initiative

    The Washington State Supreme Court has agreed to hear a homeless advocacy group's appeal in its failed challenge to a voter-approved initiative expanding Spokane's restrictions on homeless encampments.

  • June 06, 2024

    NTSB Pins Jets' Near Miss On Fog In Austin, Controller Errors

    Dense fog, the absence of critical runway safety technology and an air traffic controller's incorrect assumptions contributed to the February 2023 near-collision of a FedEx cargo plane and a Southwest Airlines passenger jet in Austin, Texas, the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday.

  • June 06, 2024

    NRA Can't Undo $6.4M Misconduct Verdict In NY AG Case

    A New York judge on Thursday rejected a request by the National Rifle Association and its longtime executives to set aside a jury's $6.4 million verdict that found they misspent charitable funds, saying Attorney General Letitia James provided sufficient evidence for the jurors to rule in her favor.

  • June 06, 2024

    7th Circ. Says Courts Can't Help Canadian Waive 10-Year Ban

    The Seventh Circuit on Thursday said its hands were tied on getting a Canadian man a quick decision on whether he can stay in the U.S. while he seeks to waive a requirement he stay abroad for 10 years.

  • June 06, 2024

    Split FCC Kicks Off Cybersecurity Fund For Schools, Libraries

    Democrats on the Federal Communications Commission created a $200 million pilot program Thursday to build up cybersecurity in schools and libraries.

  • June 06, 2024

    Judge Consolidates Suits Targeting Okla. Immigration Law

    A federal judge has combined two lawsuits challenging a new Oklahoma law making it a crime for undocumented immigrants to live in the state, joining separate cases lodged by the Biden administration and a nonprofit immigrant advocacy group.

  • June 06, 2024

    Tribes, Green Groups Lose Challenge To SunZia Power Line

    An Arizona federal judge Thursday threw out a challenge by a coalition of tribes and conservation groups to undo a nearly decade-old federal government decision that they said allowed SunZia Transmission LLC to route a 520-mile power line through important cultural and historical sites in the San Pedro Valley.

  • June 06, 2024

    Tribes Pan ND Assembly's High Court Brief In Subpoena Row

    Two North Dakota tribes looking to undo an Eighth Circuit ruling that quashed subpoenas on North Dakota legislators and staff in underlying voting rights litigation told justices the ruling should be vacated as moot despite the lawmakers' arguments otherwise.

  • June 06, 2024

    FCC Could Change Credit Rules To Qualify For Broadband Aid

    The Federal Communications Commission is considering easing some letter of credit requirements for Universal Service Fund recipients, saying the current mandates may have become too onerous and could be slowing broadband deployment.

  • June 06, 2024

    Navy Denied IT Worker Promotions For Race, 11th Circ. Told

    A Florida-based Navy information technology worker urged the Eleventh Circuit in a hearing Thursday to reverse a lower court's decision to toss his discrimination lawsuit, saying he was passed over for promotion because he was Hispanic and older than other candidates despite being the best qualified.

  • June 06, 2024

    6th Circuit Selected For Start Of Net Neutrality Fight

    The Sixth Circuit was chosen by random drawing Thursday to consolidate, at least for now, more than half a dozen challenges to the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules.

  • June 06, 2024

    Transport Monopoly Indictment Is Deficient, Accused Says

    One of 12 individuals who U.S. federal prosecutors claim conspired to monopolize cross-border sales of used vehicles and other goods from the U.S. to Central America using violence has moved to dismiss antitrust charges, saying prosecutors omitted elements of an indictable offense.

  • June 06, 2024

    Wash. Labor Dept. Wants To Back AG In ICE Inspections Suit

    The Washington state labor and health departments want to throw their support behind efforts in the Ninth Circuit by the state's governor and attorney general to defend a state law that allows surprise inspections at private immigration detention centers.

  • June 06, 2024

    FCC Floats New Rules On ISPs To Protect Internet Security

    The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday proposed to impose new rules on internet service providers to ensure security of the internet's crucial routing technology, the Border Gateway Protocol.

  • June 06, 2024

    Prof Can Test NC State Building For Carcinogens

    A split state appeals court has granted a former North Carolina State University employee stricken by cancer access to gather evidence in a campus building that studies showed contained cancer-causing materials.

  • June 06, 2024

    Mass. AG Asks State High Court To Affirm Housing Law

    Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell told the state's highest court this week that her office has the authority to seek enforcement of what she says is a mandatory state housing initiative requiring more than half the state's communities to allow multifamily housing development.

  • June 06, 2024

    FDA Urges High Court To Hear 5th Circ. Flavored E-Cig Case

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to grant its petition for a review of an en banc Fifth Circuit decision overturning its denial of a flavored e-cigarette marketing application, saying this case provides a better vehicle to decide the issues than other petitions at the high court.

  • June 06, 2024

    5th Circ. Sides With Miss. In Pipeline Permitting Row

    The Fifth Circuit has found a lower court properly threw out an interstate pipeline company's assertion that annual levee crossing fees sought by Mississippi regulators were unconstitutional because they fell outside the scope of the company's 75-year-old permit.

  • June 06, 2024

    NC Dems Want Constitutional Right To Public Records

    Democrats in the North Carolina General Assembly have proposed sister bills to amend the state constitution by establishing a right of access to public records and meetings.

  • June 06, 2024

    Election Officials Blasted For Not Stopping Suspended Judge

    A Michigan state judge has said that election officials had abdicated their responsibility to keep "patently ineligible" candidates off the ballot, ordering them to stop former Detroit Judge Kahlilia Davis from running again after the state Supreme Court suspended her for six years for misconduct.

  • June 06, 2024

    Some Colo. Justices Call For Nixing Peremptory Strikes

    Three Colorado Supreme Court justices said this week that eliminating peremptory challenges would help remove "the taint of impermissible discrimination" from the jury selection process, writing in two cases involving the dismissal of Black jurors that the strikes often facilitate racism that can be near impossible for a court to address.

Expert Analysis

  • Fostering Employee Retention Amid Shaky DEI Landscape

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    Ongoing challenges to the legality of corporate diversity, equity and inclusion programs are complicating efforts to use DEI as an employee retention tool, but with the right strategic approach employers can continue to recruit and retain diverse talent — even after the FTC’s ban on noncompetes, says Ally Coll at the Purple Method.

  • Are Concessions In FDA's Lab-Developed Tests Rule Enough?

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    Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's new policy for laboratory-developed tests included major strategic concessions to help balance patient safety, access and diagnostic innovation, the new rule may well face significant legal challenges in court, say Dominick DiSabatino and Audrey Mercer at Sheppard Mullin.

  • 5 Climate Change Regulatory Issues Insurers Should Follow

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    The climate change landscape for insurers has changed dramatically recently — and not just because of the controversy over the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's climate-related risk disclosure rules, says Thomas Dawson at McDermott.

  • How New Rule Would Change CFIUS Enforcement Powers

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    Before the May 15 comment deadline, companies may want to weigh in on proposed regulatory changes to enforcement and mitigation tools at the disposal of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, including broadened subpoena powers, difficult new mitigation timelines and higher maximum penalties, say attorneys at Venable.

  • What's Extraordinary About Challenges To SEC Climate Rule

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    A set of ideologically diverse legal challenges to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's climate disclosure rule have been consolidated in the Eighth Circuit via a seldom-used lottery system, and the unpredictability of this process may drive agencies toward a more cautious future approach to rulemaking, say attorneys at Thompson Coburn.

  • 8 Questions To Ask Before Final CISA Breach Reporting Rule

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    The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s recently proposed cyber incident reporting requirements for critical infrastructure entities represent the overall approach CISA will take in its final rule, so companies should be asking key compliance questions now and preparing for a more complicated reporting regime, say Arianna Evers and Shannon Mercer at WilmerHale.

  • Series

    Swimming Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Years of participation in swimming events, especially in the open water, have proven to be ideal preparation for appellate arguments in court — just as you must put your trust in the ocean when competing in a swim event, you must do the same with the judicial process, says John Kulewicz at Vorys.

  • Key Priorities In FDIC Report On Resolving Big Bank Failures

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    The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s report last month on the resolvability of large financial institutions contains little new information, but it does reiterate key policy priorities, including the agency's desire to enhance loss-absorbing capacity through long-term debt requirements and preference for single-point-of-entry resolution strategies, say attorneys at Freshfields.

  • Best Practices For Space Security In Our Connected World

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    NASA's recently published space security guide is another indication that cyber-resilience has become a global theme for the space and satellite sector, as well as a useful reference for companies and organizations reviewing their cybersecurity frameworks or looking to partner with the U.S. agency, says Hayley Blyth at Bird & Bird.

  • Opinion

    SEC Doesn't Have Legal Authority For Climate Disclosure Rule

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    Instead of making the required legal argument to establish its authority, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's climate-related disclosure rule hides behind more than 1,000 references to materiality to give the appearance that its rule is legally defensible, says Bernard Sharfman at RealClearFoundation.

  • What 100 Federal Cases Suggest About Changes To Chevron

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    With the U.S. Supreme Court poised to overturn or narrow its 40-year-old doctrine of Chevron deference, a review of 100 recent federal district court decisions confirm that changes to the Chevron framework will have broad ramifications — but the magnitude of the impact will depend on the details of the high court's ruling, say Kali Schellenberg and Jon Cochran at LeVan Stapleton.

  • FTC Noncompete Rule May Still Face Historical Hurdles

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    The Federal Trade Commission's final rule banning noncompetes might face challenges that could have been avoided with more cautious consideration of the commission's long history of failed lawsuits that went beyond the agency's statutory authority, as well as the mountain of judicial precedent justifying noncompete agreements in employment contracts, say attorneys at BakerHostetler.

  • A Look At Subchapter V As Debt Limit Expiration Looms

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    If proposed legislation to extend Subchapter V’s debt eligibility ceiling sunset date in June is passed, bankruptcy professionals can seek ways to work with their local jurisdictions to advocate for code changes and guidance that bring more efficiencies and clarity to the process, say Matthew Brash at Newpoint Advisors and Melinda Bennett at Stretto.

  • Opinion

    SEC Should Be Allowed To Equip Investors With Climate Info

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    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's new rule to require more climate-related disclosures will provide investors with much-needed clarity, despite opponents' attempts to challenge the rule with misused legal arguments, say Sarah Goetz at Democracy Forward and Cynthia Hanawalt at Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change.

  • 8 Fla. Statutes That Construction Cos. Should Prepare For

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    In this article, Jason Lambert at Hill Ward discusses a number of recent bills out of the Florida Legislature targeting construction companies in the Sunshine State that have been sent to the governor for signature, at least some of which will have broad impacts that affected companies should prepare for ahead of the July 1 effective date.

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