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Public Policy
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July 09, 2024
DC Circ. Sends EPA Chemical Test Order Back For Review
The D.C. Circuit scrapped a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency order directing seven chemical manufacturers and processors to test the effects of 1,1,2-trichloroethane on the reproductive systems of birds, holding that it improperly relied on nonpublic information to justify the need for the testing.
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July 09, 2024
Aetna Beats Blue Cross In NC Health Plan Contract Battle
An administrative judge affirmed North Carolina's switch of its employee and retiree health plan to Aetna, reasoning Blue Cross Blue Shield failed to prove state officials made errors favoring the competitor when evaluating bids.
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July 09, 2024
3rd Circ. Questions DuPont Family Trust's ERISA Status
In a hearing Tuesday about a dispute between the DuPont family and its domestic workers over trust money, Third Circuit judges quizzed both sides on the level of involvement needed from trustees or the family for the fund to be considered a plan covered by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
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July 09, 2024
Philly EB-5 Investors Can Seek Visa Outside Court, Panel Says
The D.C. Circuit on Tuesday found three Chinese EB-5 investors who sought to fast-track a visa by putting their money into a Philadelphia transit project can still do so without litigation in a decision backing a trial court ruling dismissing their case.
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July 09, 2024
Bill Would Approve Largest Tribal Water Rights Settlement
A bipartisan group of Arizona federal lawmakers has introduced legislation that, if approved, would authorize the country's largest Native American water rights settlement and resolve claims by the Navajo Nation and the San Juan Southern Paiute and Hopi tribes.
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July 09, 2024
Texas Refinery Says EPA Needs To Rule On CAA Exception
A small refinery based in Sugar Land, Texas, says the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency did not meet its deadline to rule on whether the refinery can get an exemption to federal renewable fuel requirements, telling a Texas federal court Monday the agency was damaging its business.
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July 09, 2024
Boeing, DOJ Say 737 Max Families Can't Rush Monitor Pick
Boeing has told a Texas federal judge that 737 Max crash victims' families cannot rush the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee the company's safety and compliance efforts, saying its new tentative plea agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice adequately addresses the monitorship issue.
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July 09, 2024
Dems Request Special Counsel To Probe Justice Thomas Gifts
Two Democratic senators have asked U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel to investigate whether U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' failure to disclose various gifts received during his tenure on the high court amounts to chargeable ethics violations or tax crimes.
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July 09, 2024
Experts Lose EPA Scientific Panel 'Echo Chamber' Lawsuit
The D.C. Circuit has tossed a lawsuit alleging that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency illegally created a scientific "echo chamber" by not selecting experts with an industry background to serve on an air quality advisory committee.
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July 09, 2024
FTC Says Drug Middlemen Inflate Costs, Squeeze Pharmacies
The Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday that its study of pharmacy benefit managers has shown that six large companies now control 95% of all prescriptions filled in the U.S., allowing them to profit at the expense of patients and independent pharmacies.
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July 09, 2024
Menendez Atty Accuses Feds Of 'Trickery' As Trial Nears End
The bribery case against Sen. Bob Menendez is being "fudged" to compensate for pervasive gaps in evidence, his counsel told a federal jury in Manhattan at the start of defense closing arguments Tuesday.
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July 09, 2024
NYC Defends Policy Of Shuttering Unlicensed Pot Stores
New York City defended its policy of padlocking stores selling marijuana without a license, saying the stores represent a threat to public health, and it urged a federal judge in Manhattan to reject an injunction sought by more than two dozen targeted retailers.
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July 09, 2024
2nd Circ. Urged To Toss Cannabis Dormant Commerce Suit
New York cannabis regulators have urged the Second Circuit to disregard a California lawyer's efforts to upend the state's licensing program, arguing that the dormant commerce clause doesn't apply to marijuana, a substance that Congress has not permitted to be traded between states.
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July 09, 2024
House Dems Seek Info From DOI Over Alleged Shale Cartel
House Democrats sitting on the House Natural Resources Committee penned a letter Tuesday seeking information from the U.S. Department of the Interior concerning eight oil companies accused of colluding with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Companies to artificially inflate gas prices.
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July 09, 2024
CIT Finds Labor Issues Don't Justify Penalty Evasion Ruling
The U.S. Court of International Trade backed U.S. Customs and Border Protection's decision not to penalize an importer that allegedly threatened workers against speaking with officials investigating potential duty evasion, saying the purported misconduct hadn't hampered the probe.
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July 09, 2024
Veriwave Telco Faces FCC Action Over 'Tax Relief' Robocalls
The Federal Communications Commission is moving to block robocalls about purported "tax relief" programs from a Delaware-based telecommunications company, announcing in an order Monday that Veriwave Telco had another 14 days to demonstrate compliance with the agency's rules or risk having downstream providers cut its traffic.
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July 09, 2024
Ex-DOJ Atty Tells Guo Jury Of Illicit Extradition Campaign
Prominent Chinese Communist Party critic Miles Guo capped off his defense to $1 billion fraud charges Tuesday with testimony from a former U.S. Department of Justice attorney, who admitted to participating in a plot to lobby the U.S. government for Guo's extradition to China.
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July 09, 2024
Judge Calls Cost Of DOJ's Assa Abloy Market Study 'Insane'
A D.C. federal judge took the U.S. Department of Justice and its monitoring trustee to task Tuesday for their pursuit of an open-ended look at Assa Abloy's books to check for anticompetitive harms from a 2023 merger, excoriating budget estimates pricing the investigation at a minimum of $1.7 million.
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July 09, 2024
5th Circ. Indicates Skepticism In Brett Favre Defamation Case
The Fifth Circuit on Tuesday seemed skeptical that comments made by former NFL star Shannon Sharpe about Brett Favre's alleged involvement in a massive Mississippi welfare fraud scheme amounted to defamation, pressing Favre's attorney over why the retired NFL quarterback didn't sue over Sharpe's more emotionally charged statements.
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July 09, 2024
Maryland, SC Tell 4th Circ. PFAS Suits Belong In State Courts
Federal district courts properly determined that lawsuits Maryland and South Carolina filed against 3M over alleged contamination stemming from the manufacture, use and disposal of a wide range of consumer products containing so-called forever chemicals can proceed within their respective state courts, the two states told the Fourth Circuit.
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July 09, 2024
Alaska Senators Condemn District Judge After Resignation
Alaska's two Republican senators reprimanded the federal judge from their state who was found by a special committee to have created a hostile work environment and had an "inappropriately sexualized relationship" with one of his clerks, and has resigned.
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July 09, 2024
Ex-NLRB Atty Rejoins Ogletree After In-House Stint
After a busy month of expansion, management-side labor and employment firm Ogletree Deakins Nash Smoak & Stewart PC announced Monday that it is welcoming a shareholder back to the firm following his in-house stint with wholesale grocery distributor UNFI.
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July 09, 2024
Ex-NRA Finance Chief Agrees To 10-Year NY Nonprofit Ban
A former chief financial officer of the National Rifle Association has agreed not to serve as a fiduciary of a New York nonprofit for 10 years as part of a settlement in the state attorney general's suit in state court alleging he and other executives misused donor money, according to deal terms disclosed Tuesday.
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July 09, 2024
5th Circ. Skeptical Of Nixing ESG Rule Despite Chevron's End
A Fifth Circuit panel appeared unlikely Tuesday to knock out a Biden administration rule allowing retirement plan advisers to consider environmental, social and governance factors when choosing investments, although one judge seemed to support vacating a lower court's decision upholding the regulation in light of the Chevron doctrine's demise.
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July 09, 2024
'ComEd Four' To Renew Acquittal Bid After Bribery Ruling
An Illinois federal judge effectively pushed the next ruling in the criminal case against former Commonwealth Edison CEO Anne Pramaggiore and her three co-defendants to at least winter, as the defendants vowed to renew their acquittal bid in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling finding that federal bribery law doesn't criminalize rewards given after an official act.
Expert Analysis
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Circuit Judge Writes An Opinion, AI Helps: What Now?
Last week's Eleventh Circuit opinion in Snell v. United Specialty Insurance, notable for a concurrence outlining the use of artificial intelligence to evaluate a term's common meaning, is hopefully the first step toward developing a coherent basis for the judiciary's generative AI use, says David Zaslowsky at Baker McKenzie.
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Opinion
US Solar Import Probe's Focus On China Is Misguided
The U.S. Department of Commerce's recent anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigation focuses on the apparent Chinese ownership of solar device importers in four Southeast Asian countries — a point that is irrelevant under the controlling statute, says John Anwesen at Lighthill.
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DC Circ. Ruling Heightens HHS Contract Pharmacy Challenges
The D.C. Circuit's recent ruling that the Section 340B program does not bar manufacturers from restricting deliveries of discounted drugs to contract pharmacies represents a second strike against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' current contract pharmacy policy and raises the stakes surrounding an upcoming Seventh Circuit ruling on the same issue, say attorneys at Foley Hoag.
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Ohio Tax Talk: The Legislative Push For Property Tax Relief
As Ohio legislators attempt to alleviate the increasing property tax burden, four recent bills that could significantly affect homeowners propose to eliminate replacement property tax levies, freeze property taxes for longtime homeowners, adjust homestead exemptions annually for inflation, and temporarily expand the homestead exemption, say Raghav Agnihotri and Rachael Chamberlain at Frost Brown.
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Aviation Watch: Mostly Smooth Landing For New FAA Law
The recently signed Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act enhances air safety in several key ways, including strengthened passenger rights and cockpit voice recorder requirements, but an expansion of slot exemptions at Reagan National Airport is a notable misstep, says Alan Hoffman, a retired attorney and aviation expert.
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Series
In The CFPB Playbook: Regulatory Aims Get High Court Assist
Newly emboldened after the U.S. Supreme Court last month found that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's funding is constitutional, the bureau has likely experienced a psychic boost, allowing its already robust enforcement agenda to continue expanding, say attorneys at Husch Blackwell.
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NY Public Campaign Funding May Attract Scrutiny From Feds
The upcoming elections across New York this year will be the first under the state’s public campaign finance program — which may broaden federal prosecutors' purview to target state election fraud and corruption, says Jarrod Schaeffer at Abell Eskew.
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FTC Theories Of Harm After Anesthesia Co. Ruling
As Federal Trade Commission litigation against U.S. Anesthesia Partners proceeds following a Texas federal court's recent decision to dismiss a private equity sponsor from the suit, the case attempts to incorporate and advance some of the commission's theories of competitive harm from the final 2023 Merger Guidelines, say attorneys at Mintz.
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National Security And The Commercial Space Sector: Part 2
Strategy documents recently published by the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Space Force confirm the importance of the commercial space sector to the DOD, but say little about achieving the institutional changes needed to integrate commercial capabilities in support of national security in space, say Jeff Chiow and Skip Smith at Greenberg Traurig.
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FTC Hearing On Fake Review Rule Stressed Compliance Costs
The Federal Trade Commission is likely to finalize its proposed rule to prohibit marketers from using deceptive practices in their product reviews after an informal hearing covered arguments over whether costs of implementing the rule, such as review moderation and software maintenance, would be minimal, says Jeffrey Edelstein at Manatt.
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FTC Focus: Exploring The Meaning Of Orange Book Letters
The Federal Trade Commission recently announced an expansion of its campaign to promote competition by targeting pharmaceutical manufacturers' improper Orange Book patent listings, but there is a question of whether and how this helps generic entrants, say Colin Kass and David Munkittrick at Proskauer.
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3 Recent Decisions To Note As Climate Litigation Heats Up
Three recent rulings on climate-related issues — from a New York federal court, a New York state court and an international tribunal, respectively — demonstrate both regulators' concern about climate change and the complexity of conflicting regulations in different jurisdictions, say J. Michael Showalter and Robert Middleton at ArentFox Schiff.
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Perspectives
Justices' Repeat Offender Ruling Eases Prosecutorial Hurdle
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last week in Brown v. U.S., clarifying which drug law applies to sentencing a repeat offender in a federal firearms case, allows courts to rely on outdated drug schedules to impose increased sentences, thus removing a significant hurdle for prosecutors, says attorney Molly Parmer.
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Investors Can Aid In The Acceptance Of Psychedelic Medicine
Psychedelic medicine is ready to have its breakthrough moment, and although it still faces political, legal and communications challenges, private equity investors can play a significant role in changing the public perception on psychedelics from taboo to acceptance, say Kimberly Chew at Husch Blackwell, Charlie Panfil at the Daschle Group and Ethan Lutz at FTI Consulting.
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Opinion
Exec Liability Bill For Failed Banks Is Unnecessary, Unwise
A bill before the U.S. Senate, which would effectively empower the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to hold senior bank executives strictly liable for reasonable business decisions that lead to bank failures, needlessly overwrites the existing negligence standard and rewards counterproductive caution in management, say attorneys at Davis Polk.