Justin (Gus) Hurwitz of Pennsylvania and Gregory M. Dickinson of Stanford have written The Consumer Protection Paradox: Learning, Feedback, and the Limits of Consumer Protection Law, forthcoming in the Emory Law Journal. Here’s the abstract: Modern consumer-protection law is built on a simplifying picture: The consumer and her vulnerabilities are treated as static over time. […]
The FTC announced last Friday that it will no longer enforce policies against “disparate-impact or unfair discrimination” claims. This will affect the agency’s once active enforcement against auto dealers’ discriminatory financing practices that cheat minority car buyers. In 2022, for example, the Commission alleged that Passport Auto, a Washington D.C.-area auto dealer, violated the FTC […]
At Ballard Spahr’s Consumer Finance Monitor podcast. Consumer Reports recently issued a report on AI.
Here, by Douglas Gillison. The memo, from Chief Examiner Fatima Batie, said “I promise you if you say something inflammatory or newsworthy it will get back to you in the most unpleasant manner and I’m not referring to my or [CFPB examination head] Calvin [Hagin]’s reaction.” Is it inflammatory or newsworthy to tell a financial […]
One diet promoted by influencers and others over the last few years is a “low-FODMAP” diet, which entails “strict reduction of all slowly absorbed or indigestible short-chain carbohydrates (ie, FODMAPs) followed by reintroduction of specific FODMAPs according to tolerance.” The diet is controversial. FDA regulations prevent food producers from labeling products based on their FODMAP […]
In August 2025, a divided panel of the Sixth Circuit denied an industry petition for review of a 2024 FCC rule imposing reporting requirements on telecommunications in the event of data breaches involving customers’ personally identifiable information. The industry had raised both arguments about the FCC’s statutory authority, and a 2017 Congressional Review Act disapproval. […]
Christine Chen Zinner & Christine Hines have written Consumer Protection Under the Trump CFPB. What Comes Next?, 38 Loy. Consumer L. Rev. 131 (2026). I can’t find it on the web yet except on Westlaw at 38 LYCLREV 131. Here’s the concluding paragraph: In this current moment, with seemingly no checks on wrongdoing and little […]
Pool World and The National Law Review, two small business that successfully resisted extortionate copyright infringement claims filed by Prepared Food Photos (“PFP”), a notorious copyright troll whose depredations I have discussed here several times, moved in the Seventh Circuit for leave to file an amicus brief supporting an appeal by the only PFP victim […]
A third appellate decision today about FDCA preemption….it’s definitely clerk turnover season! After studies started casting doubt on the notion that oral phenylephrine (oral PE) was an effective nasal decongestant, consumers across the country and a retail pharmacy sued drug manufacturers under the theory that the manufacturers had produced, marketed, and sold “nasal decongestants containing […]
In what seems to be a matter of happenstance today, two courts of appeals issued decisions today holding that state laws relating to tobacco were not preempted. First, in Iowans for Alternatives to Smoking & Tobacco v. Mosiman, the Eighth Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction against an Iowa law that prohibited the manufacture and sale […]