The City of Seattle passed the Fair Chance Housing Ordinance, which prohibits landlords from (1) inquiring about the criminal history of current or potential tenants and (2) from taking adverse action based on that criminal history. In a split decision yesterday, the Ninth Circuit found the “inquiry” provision unconstitutional under the First Amendment, but upheld […]
Author Archives: Adam Pulver
Almost twenty years ago, various groups of merchants filed antitrust litigation against Visa, Mastercard, and banks that serve as payment-card issuers for those networks, tied to the “interchange fees” charged for each transaction. (In full disclosure, I worked on one of the district court cases over a decade ago. I remember close-to-nothing about the case.) […]
Many of us learned about multlievel-marketing company and purveyor of women’s clothing LuLaRoe in 2021, when dueling documentaries about the company’s rapid growth and decline were released. As featured in those documentaries, the company was the subject of extensive litigation and investigations as to its relationships with its “fashion retailers” — i.e., those recruited to […]
After the City of Edina, Minnesota, banned the sale of flavored tobacco products, R.J. Reynolds and other tobacco industry companies sued, arguing the law is preempted by the federal Tobacco Control Act. In a unanimous per curiam opinion, the Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision holding that the law is not preempted. Agreeing with […]
In its decisions in Spokeo v. Robins and TransUnion v. Ramirez, the Supreme Court held that consumers lack Article III standing to challenge violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act absent the showing of some concrete harm beyond the publication of inaccurate credit information. On Tuesday, the Fourth Circuit confronted how those decisions interact with […]
After receiving consumer complaints about its use of pre-checked recurring-donation checkboxes, the Minnesota Attorney General sent subpoenas and a civil investigative demand to WinRed, a so-called “conduit” political action committee (PAC). WinRed sought a preliminary injunction against the investigation in federal district court, arguing that Minnesota’s consumer protection laws were preempted by the Federal Election […]
As noted in today’s Second Circuit opinion, there have been nearly a dozen constitutional challenges to New York’s rent regulation regime over the years. The court of appeals rejected the latest challenge, brought by Mayer Brown on behalf of landlords, arguing that the rent-stabilization laws were facially unconstitutional as physical takings and irrational in violation […]
In 2016, the CFPB issued a rule requiring certain disclosures for digital wallets and other prepaid accounts. Paypal challenged the rule as contrary to statute, unconstitutional, and arbitrary and capricious. The district court agreed with Paypal that the disclosure rules violated the EFTA ban on mandatory model clauses, and thus did not reach the other […]
Nursing homes across the country were a major center of COVID-19 outbreaks throughout 2020, and hundreds of lawsuits have been filed based on alleged inadequate infection control measures, brought by families of nursing home residents under tort law and state consumer protection statutes. So far, much of the litigation has focused on jurisdictional questions. Five […]
In a major decision today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit rejected Johnson & Johnson’s attempt to use bankruptcy to strictly curtail its liability for claims that talc in its consumer products caused cancer. As the Court explained: With mounting payouts and litigation costs, [J&J’s] Old Consumer [entity], through a series of […]
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