OpenMarket: CEI Litigation

Last Friday, CEI took a stand for federalism and separation of powers through an amicus brief. These constitutional principles are critical to the constitutionally limited government that ensures our freedom. Our system of government is designed to accommodate differences of opinion on how it should be run. This was done by allowing each state to decide for itself how it wanted to operate.

CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman discusses the issue with Walter Kreucher, one of the petitioners in the case, Walter Kreucher, a retired automotive engineer who spent over three decades working on regulatory compliance programs.

The Federal Register, the official daily government publication of regulations, proposed rules, and similar items did not go online today. We were awaiting today’s Federal Register in order to file a lawsuit challenging the new federal auto fuel economy rules. Now we’ll have to wait a bit.

Q: What is the main question at issue in Frank v. Gaos?

A: The Supreme Court will consider whether a class action settlement is fair under the rules where the plaintiffs’ attorneys direct all of the settlement relief to outside organizations instead of the class members.

Our class action legal team here at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Center for Class Action Fairness, has a new video explainer on their upcoming case before the U.S. Supreme Court this term, Frank v. Gaos. Find out how they are fighting to make sure regular people benefit from class actions settlements, rather than attorneys and special interests.

On October 31, 2018, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Frank v. Gaos. The petitioners are class members challenging a class action settlement resulting from alleged privacy violations by Google’s search engine. Out of the $8.5 million fund created by the settlement, it paid nothing to class members. Instead, it paid $2.1 million to the lawyers, $1.1 to named plaintiffs and administrative costs, and $5.3 million in cy pres payments to a handful of unaffiliated third-party organizations, including class counsel’s alma maters and groups Google already supported through donations.

Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute is asking the Supreme Court to hear the lawsuit we filed challenging the constitutionality of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (formerly known as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB).

Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing is slated to begin Tuesday, September 4, at 9:30 a.m. before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It is safe to say that the hearing will be replete with the usual senatorial posturing and pandering. But if they actually get around to asking the nominee some substantive questions, among those that loom largest is how Kavanaugh conceives of the judicial power.

Public sector workers who haven’t affirmatively chosen to support labor unions should see a bump in their paychecks, thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision in Janus v. AFSCME. The decision holds that forcing public sector workers to financially support a union violates their First Amendment speech and associational rights. 

Today’s Supreme Court decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair is extremely disappointing and will likely cost online sellers and consumers dearly. Stopping state regulatory and tax power at each state’s border should be the default rule for online commerce, but the court has chosen to set state tax authorities loose on small Internet retailers and their customers across the country.