by Stephen Gardner Today, the Supreme Court held that collecting government debt by robocalling cellphones didn’t deserve special First Amendment treatment. In Barr v. American Assn. of Political Consultants, Inc., the Court held that a 2015 amendment to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which allowed cellphone robocalls to collect federal debts (such as student loans […]
The Supreme Court issued its ruling in Seila Law v. CFPB today, holding by a 5-4 vote that the Congress violated the principle of separation of powers by placing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under a single director removable by the president only for cause. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion, with Justice Kagan […]
by Paul Alan Levy As I have discussed in several previous posts, Mathew Higbee has built up a significant copyright enforcement business that depends on the issuance of threatening demand letters that are followed up by a small army of “compliance resolution specialists” who nag and threaten large awards of damages, the issuance of judgment […]
"A federal judge has ordered the Department of Education to cancel the student loans of all 7,200 former Corinthian Colleges students in Massachusetts. This is the first time a federal court has ordered a borrower defense discharge of federal student loans. "The victory in Vara v. DeVos comes nearly two years after the Department of […]
The D.C. attorney general sued four of the world’s largest oil and gas companies — BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell — Thursday, asserting that they have engaged in a decades-long campaign to deceive District consumers about the effects of fossil fuels on climate change. The lawsuit, based on the DC Consumer Protection Procedures Act and […]
The Trump campaign infamously demanded a liability waiver from people attending Trump's rally in Tulsa last weekend. Now, law prof Heidi Li Feldman has penned an op-ed for the LA Times entitled Your college may ask you to sign a waiver for harm inflicted by COVID-19. Don’t do it.
by Jeff Sovern Businesses are lobbying to overturn laws that impose liability for negligently infecting customers with the coronavirus, claiming that they fear frivolous law suits and that they will observe heath guidelines to prevent the spread of the virus. But in fact, plenty of businesses are not even requiring employees to wear masks–and that's […]
by Jeff Sovern This article in the Houston Chronicle says that Texas health laws don't require restaurants to tell diners whether employees have COVID, though some restaurants have voluntarily disclosed that employees have been infected. Health laws around the nation should be amended to prevent employees with COVID from knowingly or negligently working at restaurants, […]
We've received the following Call for Papers: Call for PapersJunior Consumer Law Scholars WIP session AALS Section on Commercial & Consumer Law January 5-9, 2021, AALS Annual Meeting The AALS Section on Commercial & Consumer Law is pleased to announce a “Works-in-Progress Session for Junior Consumer Law Scholars” program during the 2021 AALS Annual Meeting in San […]
Read The Trump Administration’s Attacks on Regulatory Benefits by law prof RIchard Revesz. Here's the abstract: For the last four decades, benefit-cost analysis has been a mainstay of the U.S. federal regulatory process and, under Executive Orders in effect since 1981, such analysis must generally be used to justify significant federal regulations. While administrations of […]