Category Archives: Uncategorized

Advocacy group assesses financial services-related floor votes in 119th Congress

Americans for Financial Reform published a report card on how members of Congress have voted so far in this session on financial services issues. The report documents member votes on CFPB-related legislation, including on the 2025 resolutions that repealed agency regulations. It also covers members’ floor votes on crypto-related legislation, including the Genius Act and […]

“Tort Reform” Groups, 2026 Update

The Center for Justice & Democracy has issued Civil Justice Skewed: The Groups and the Billions Spent Advocating for “Tort Reform.” The study provides “a comprehensive overview of the organizations working in 2026 to limit the legal rights of injured parties, updating [CJ&D’s] prior research in a field that has expanded considerably in recent years.” […]

New report on judges in “business courts”

A new report from the The People’s Parity Project examines the backgrounds of judges on state “business courts.” Sixty-three percent of Americans live in a state with a business court. Although business courts are intended to hear cases between businesses, a significant number of states hear cases that include workers and consumers, typically relating to […]

Rockefeller Photos: Prepared Foods Photos’ Abusive Copyright Enforcement Continues Under a New Name

It’s been a few months since I last published about the abusive copyright enforcement campaign operated by Prepared Food Photos,  which has been shaking down small business that have used its stock photos of food, rightly or wrongly, for damages settlements many times the market value of its copyrighted images. (Other discussions are here, here […]

Maryland enacts anti-surveillance pricing bill

Text available here. It’s believed to be the first law banning surveillance pricing in the country (New York has a law requiring that any use of algorithmic pricing be disclosed). The law is limited to larger grocery stores and delivery services. It follows a December story by Consumer Reports that Instacart was using surveillance pricing […]

Podcast on BNL regulation and more in NY

On the Ballard Spahr Consumer Finance Monitor podcast: an interview with the NY Department of Financial Services’ Max Dubin, Chief of Staff to the Acting Superintendent of Banking. With the CFPB’s sidelining, state regulatory agencies have become even more important, and New York, aside from being a large market, may foreshadow what other states do.