A series of pieces in a SCOTUSBlog symposium consider various aspects of the pending religious challenge to Obamacare's conception mandate, which we've previously covered here and here. Later this term, the Supreme Court will hear seven cases on this subject known together by the name of the lead case, Zubik v. Burwell. The question is whether the Affordable […]
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by Paul Alan Levy The Internet of Things and the world of smart devices has been heralded by industry giants like Philips for the conveniences that it provides for consumers, while allowing companies the “freedom to innovate,” but privacy advocates have long warned about the capabilities that such systems have to invade consumer privacy. But […]
The Washington Post explains how an employee who works in Maryland asserting rights under Maryland law in a Maryland court might be out of luck: his contract with his employer says that Georgia law applies. It's getting easier for companies to stick choice of law provisions into contractual fine print and thereby pick the state […]
In a report released last week, Public Citizen documents how the Chamber is trying to thwart the work of the CFPB in areas such as credit card regulation and protecting service members from predatory lending. Read the report, "Undermining the CFPB," here.
by Paul Alan Levy Last month I criticized a Butte, Montana newspaper which, having decided to switch on January 1, 2016, from a commenting system that allowed users to choose pseudonyms to one that will demand the publishing of real names, announced that the “real names” of those who had previously commented using pseudonyms would […]
By unanimous consent, the Senate yesterday passed a law to ban non-disparagement clauses in consumer contracts. Public Citizen supports the Consumer Review Freedom Act, which addresses a problem we've litigated and advocated against on many occasions, including most notably in the KlearGear case. Here's a discussion of the Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the bill […]
Over the past few years, we've seen sweeping arbitration decisions from the Court like Concepcion and Italian Colors making it much harder for plaintiffs to avoid forced arbitration and get their day in court. By contrast, this week's arbitration case (a loss for the consumer, as is typical) is of far less consequence. DirecTV v. Imburgia was about […]
The New York Times and Washington Post both discuss how a little-noticed provision in a federal spending bill last year is creating problems for the implementation of the ACA. (According to the Times, it has "has tangled up the Obama administration, sent tremors through health insurance markets and rattled confidence in the durability of President Obama’s […]
Today the Supreme Court granted cert. in Sheriff v. Gillie, an FDCPA case out of the Sixth Circuit. As described by the court of appeals: Plaintiffs brought this action under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”), 15 U.S.C. § 1692 et seq., alleging that Defendants utilized a deceptive, misleading, or false representation or means […]
A project of the Change to Win labor federation called "Calling Out T-Mobile," is doing just that in a new report and website. The focus, as explained on the site: The Un-Carrier marketing platform makes two central claims that are misleading: T-Mobile claims to offer service plans with “No Annual Contract”. T-Mobile say it pays consumers’ […]