The news this week is the ongoing Big Tech campaign seeking a federal law to preempt state regulations on artificial intelligence. As reported, some members of Congress are attempting to push an AI preemption provision in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a must-pass federal bill. The provision would block state laws from regulating the […]
Author Archives: Christine Hines
The debt collection industry, through its trade group ACA International and Fresno Credit Bureau, sued a Colorado official this week, seeking to nullify a state law that stops medical debt from being included on consumer credit reports. The debt collectors claim that the Colorado law is preempted by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the […]
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Federal Trade Commission’s emergency motion for stay on an injunction that bars the agency from moving ahead with a civil investigative demand (CID) it had issued to nonprofit media watchdog Media Matters. Media Matters sued the FTC in June to quash the CID, alleging that the FTC […]
California car buyers have new protections from too-common bait and switch car dealer tactics in a newly passed law signed yesterday by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Much of the law is modeled after the Federal Trade Commission’s Combating Auto Retail Scams (CARS) rule that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated in January. The California CARS […]
The Federal Trade Commission and seven state attorney general offices announced a lawsuit against Ticketmaster.The FTC along with Virginia, Utah, Florida, Tennessee, Nebraska, Illinois and Colorado, sued Ticketmaster for violating the FTC Act and the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, a law created to stop attempts to automate the process of purchasing tickets en masse […]
The Securities and Exchange Commission this week said that it would allow corporations filing registration statements to use predispute arbitration clauses for investor claims. In its policy statement, the SEC said that “the presence of an issuer-investor mandatory arbitration provision will not impact decisions whether to accelerate the effectiveness of a registration statement under the […]
The National Association of Attorneys General sent a letter Monday to Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Open AI, and other AI companies, warning that state AGs would enforce their respective laws to protect children against illicit AI practices. The letter, signed by 44 jurisdictions, highlighted the recent news that Meta had approved the use of “AI […]
The Federal Trade Commission this week sued fitness operators Fitness International LLC and Fitness & Sports Clubs, LLC for using cancellation procedures that made it difficult for consumers to unsubscribe from their monthly memberships. The complaint alleges that the gyms’ practices have incurred hundreds of millions of dollars in unwanted recurring charges. According to the […]
A Texas district court, in response to a joint request from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and trade industry associations, just vacated the bureau’s own rule that had prohibited most medical debt on credit reports. The Biden-era CFPB finalized a rule in January to ban medical bills on credit reports and to prohibit lenders from […]
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday nullified the Federal Trade Commission’s Click-to-Cancel rule. The rule addressed unfair and deceptive practices in subscriptions (or negative options marketing). The FTC aimed to remove misrepresentations in subscription practices and to generally make canceling subscriptions as easy as it is to sign up for them. In reversing the […]