Category Archives: Uncategorized

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.

Maryland paper calls for state law protecting BNPL consumers

Here in a Maryland Daily Record editorial (behind a paywall but available on Lexis). Here’s an excerpt (disclosure: I am on the editorial board): Some consumers, enticed by BNPL, become overcommitted and can’t meet their financial obligations. You might think BNPL providers would suffer when consumers are in that situation, but the BNPL companies have […]

The EEOC Invokes A Hostile Work Environment Theory to Create a Hecklers’ Veto Against Universities Allowing Political Speech That Trump Disapproves

Over the past year, the Trump Administration campaigned against institutions of higher education openly scorned for being too liberal, or “woke” in the derisive terminology of the right, often seizing hypocritically on charges of anti-Semitism. The threats to Harvard University, which it has thus far fought off by virtue of its successful litigation in federal […]