Regulation and Deregulation of Industry

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      Supreme Court Declines to Rule on Tech Platforms’ Free Speech Rights

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      The justices returned both cases, which concerned state laws that supporters said were aimed at “Silicon Valley censorship,” to lower courts. Critics had said the laws violated the sites’ First Amendment rights.The Supreme Court on Monday avoided a definitive resolution of challenges to laws in Florida and Texas that curb the power of social media companies to moderate content, leaving in limbo an effort by Republicans who have promoted such legislation to remedy what they say is a bias against conservatives.Instead, the justices unanimously agreed to return the cases to lower courts for analysis. In the majority opinion, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that neither lower appeals court had properly analyzed the First Amendment challenges to the Florida and Texas laws.The laws were prompted in part by the decisions of some platforms to bar President Donald J. Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.Supporters of the laws said they were an attempt to combat what they called Silicon Valley censorship. The laws, they added, fostered free speech, giving the public access to all points of view.Opponents said the laws trampled on the platforms’ own First Amendment rights and would turn them into cesspools of filth, hate and lies.The two laws differ in their details. Florida’s prevents the platforms from permanently barring candidates for political office in the state, while Texas’ prohibits the platforms from removing any content based on a user’s viewpoint.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Meta’s Ad-Free Subscription Violates Competition Law, E.U. Says

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      Regulators said the subscription service introduced last year is a “pay or consent” method to collect personal data and bolster advertising.When Meta introduced a subscription option last year that would allow users in the European Union to pay for an advertising-free experience of Instagram and Facebook, it was meant to fix regulatory problems the company faced in the region.The plan created new legal headaches instead.On Monday, European Union regulators said Meta’s subscription, which costs up to 12.99 euros a month, amounted to a “pay or consent” scheme that required users to choose between paying a fee or handing over more personal data to Meta to use for targeted advertising.Meta introduced the subscription last year as a way to address regulatory and legal scrutiny of its advertising-based business model. Of most concern was the company’s combination of data collected about users across its different platforms — including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — along with information pulled from other websites and apps.Meta argued that by offering a subscription, users had a fair alternative.But regulators on Monday said the system was no choice at all, forcing users to pay for privacy. The authorities said Meta’s policy violated the Digital Markets Act, a new law aimed at reining in the power of the biggest tech companies.The law, known as the D.M.A., is intended to prevent large tech companies from using their size to coerce users into accepting terms of service they would otherwise reject, including the collection of personal data. The concern was platforms like Instagram and Facebook are so widely used that people have to choose to either hand over their data or not join at all.Regulators said the law required companies to allow users to opt out of having their personal data collected while still getting a “less personalized but equivalent alternative” of the service.“Meta’s ‘pay or consent’ business model is in breach of the D.M.A.,” said Thierry Breton, the European commissioner who helped draft the law. “The D.M.A. is there to give back to the users the power to decide how their data is used and ensure innovative companies can compete on equal footing with tech giants on data access.”In a statement, Meta said that the subscription service complied with the Digital Markets Act and that it would work with European regulators to resolve the investigation.Last week, Nick Clegg, Meta’s president, said that Europe was falling behind economically because of overregulation. “Europe’s regulatory complexity and the patchwork of laws across different member states often makes companies hesitant to roll out new products here,” he said.The announcement on Monday is one step in a longer process. The European Commission, the executive branch of the 27-nation bloc, has until March to complete its investigation. If found guilty, Meta could face fines of up to 10 percent of its global revenue and up to 20 percent for repeat offenses.Meta is the second company to face charges under the Digital Markets Act. Last week, the commission brought charges against Apple for unfair business practices related to the App Store. More

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      Supreme Court Rejects S.E.C.’s Administrative Tribunals

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      Such tribunals, common in executive agencies, hear enforcement actions without juries, a practice that challengers said violated the Constitution.The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected one of the primary ways the Securities and Exchange Commission enforces laws against securities fraud.The agency, like other regulators, brings some enforcement actions in internal tribunals rather than in federal courts. The S.E.C.’s practice, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for a six-justice majority in a decision divided along ideological lines, violated the right to a jury trial.“A defendant facing a fraud suit has the right to be tried by a jury of his peers before a neutral adjudicator,” the chief justice wrote.The case is one of several challenges this term to the power of administrative agencies, long a target of the conservative legal movement. The court last month rejected a challenge to the constitutionality of the way the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is funded. In January, it heard arguments in a pair of challenges to the Chevron doctrine, a foundational principle of administrative law that requires judicial deference to agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes. (That case has not been decided.)A central question in the new case, Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, No. 22-859, was whether the administrative tribunals violate the right to a jury trial guaranteed by the Seventh Amendment in “suits at common law.”Lawyers for the agency said juries were not required in administrative proceedings because they were not private lawsuits but part of an effort to protect the rights of the public generally. They added that agency adjudications without juries are commonplace, with two dozen agencies having the authority to impose penalties in administrative proceedings.The case concerned George Jarkesy, a hedge fund manager accused of misleading investors. The S.E.C. brought a civil enforcement proceeding against him before an administrative law judge employed by the agency, who ruled against Mr. Jarkesy. After an internal appeal, the agency eventually ordered him and his company to pay a civil penalty of $300,000 and to disgorge $685,000 in what it said were illicit gains.Mr. Jarkesy appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans. A divided three-judge panel of that court ruled against the agency on three different grounds, all with the potential to disrupt enforcement of not only the securities laws but also many other kinds of regulations.In addition to saying that the tribunals ran afoul of the right to a jury trial, the appeals court ruled that the agency’s judges were excessively insulated from presidential oversight and that Congress could not allow the agency itself to decide where suits should be filed. More

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      Supreme Court Backs Starbucks Over ‘Memphis 7’ Union Case

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      In a blow to the National Labor Relations Board, the justices cited inconsistent standards for courts to order employers to reinstate fired workers.The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Starbucks on Thursday in a challenge against a labor ruling by a federal judge, making it more difficult for a key federal agency to intervene when a company is accused of illegally suppressing labor organizing.Eight justices backed the majority opinion, which was written by Justice Clarence Thomas. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a separate opinion concurring with parts of the majority opinion, dissenting from other portions and agreeing with the overall judgment.The ruling came in a case brought by Starbucks over the firing of seven workers in Memphis who were trying to unionize a store in 2022. The company said it had fired them for allowing a television crew into a closed store, while the workers said that they were fired for their unionization efforts and that the company didn’t typically enforce the rules they were accused of violating.After the firings, the National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint saying that Starbucks had acted because the workers had “joined or assisted the union and engaged in concerted activities, and to discourage employees from engaging in these activities.” Separately, lawyers for the board asked a federal judge in Tennessee for an injunction reinstating the workers, and the judge issued the order in August 2022.The agency asks judges to reinstate workers in such cases because resolving the underlying legal issues can take years, during which time other workers may become discouraged from organizing even if the fired workers ultimately prevail.In its petition to the Supreme Court, the company argued that federal courts had differing standards when deciding whether to grant injunctions that reinstate workers, which the N.L.R.B. has the authority to seek under the National Labor Relations Act.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Christy Goldsmith Romero Is Front-Runner to Lead F.D.I.C.

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      The front-runner for the bank regulatory job is Christy Goldsmith Romero, a member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.Three weeks after President Biden vowed to pick a new leader for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the bank regulator shaken by a vast workplace abuse scandal, a front-runner has emerged: Christy Goldsmith Romero, who sits on the five-member Commodity Futures Trading Commission, according to two people with knowledge of the administration’s thinking.Ms. Goldsmith Romero is a lawyer who, after the financial crisis, spent more than 12 years in an office created by Congress to investigate fraud and other misconduct by banks that received money from the government’s roughly $450 billion crisis rescue package, the Troubled Asset Relief Program. From 2011 to 2022, Ms. Goldsmith Romero led the office as the special inspector-general for the program.Her work exposing fraud, which often put her at odds with not only bankers but also some government officials who were concerned about the potential damage it would do to overall public opinion of the bailout, has made her especially appealing for the job of cleaning up the F.D.I.C., said the people, who asked for anonymity to discuss the matter.Mr. Biden has not made a final decision. Ms. Goldsmith Romero’s position as the front-runner for the job was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.Ms. Goldsmith Romero declined to comment for this article.Republicans and Democrats both want a new leader for the bank regulator as soon as possible. Managers there were routinely sexually harassing junior employees and working to silence anyone who complained, according to reports last fall by The Wall Street Journal. The fact that Ms. Goldsmith Romero is a woman and a member of the L.G.B.T.Q. community — she is bisexual — is also seen as a plus, the people said, because she may be better able to build trust and restore morale among embattled junior employees.And there’s another advantage to her candidacy: Ms. Goldsmith Romero has been unanimously confirmed by the Senate — twice. Her most recent confirmation, for the C.F.T.C. post, was in 2022, recently enough that the paperwork she submitted to the Senate as part of her nomination process, as well as the background check she underwent at the time, are likely to still be valid.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      FDA Panel Weights MDMA Therapy for PTSD

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      An independent group of experts is meeting Tuesday to consider whether to allow use of this illegal drug, also known as Ecstasy, to treat PTSD. The Food and Drug Administration is weighing whether to approve the use of MDMA, also known as Ecstasy, for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. An independent advisory panel of experts will review studies on Tuesday and is expected to vote on whether the treatment would be effective and whether its benefits outweigh the risks.The panel will hear from Lykos Therapeutics, which has submitted evidence from clinical trials in an effort to obtain agency approval to sell the drug legally to treat people with a combination of MDMA and talk therapy.Millions of Americans suffer from PTSD, including military veterans who are at high risk of suicide. No new treatment for PTSD has been approved in more than 20 years.What is MDMA?Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) is a synthetic psychoactive drug first developed by Merck in 1912. After being resynthesized in the mid-1970s by Alexander Shulgin, a psychedelic chemist in the Bay Area, MDMA gained popularity among therapists. Early research suggested significant therapeutic potential for a number of mental health conditions.MDMA is an entactogen, or empathogen, that fosters self-awareness, feelings of empathy and social connectedness. It is not a classic psychedelic like LSD or psilocybin, drugs that can cause altered realities and hallucinations. Among recreational users, MDMA is commonly known as molly or Ecstasy.In 1985, as the drug became a staple at dance clubs and raves, the Drug Enforcement Administration classified MDMA as a Schedule I substance, a drug defined as having no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Electricity From Coal Is Pricey. Should Consumers Have to Pay?

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      Environmental groups are making a new economic argument against coal, the heaviest polluting fossil fuel. Some regulators are listening.For decades, environmentalists fought power plants that burn coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, by highlighting their pollution: soot, mercury and the carbon dioxide that is dangerously heating the planet.But increasingly, opponents have been making an economic argument, telling regulators that electricity produced by coal is more expensive for consumers than power generated by solar, wind and other renewable sources.And that’s been a winning strategy recently in two states where regulators forbade utilities from recouping their losses from coal-fired plants by passing those costs to ratepayers. The Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, two leading environmental groups, are hoping that if utilities are forced to absorb all the costs of burning coal, it could speed the closures of uneconomical plants.The groups are focused on utilities that generate electricity from coal and also distribute it. Those utilities have historically been allowed to pass their operating losses to customers, leaving them with costly electric bills while the plants emitted carbon dioxide that could have been avoided with a different fuel source, according to the environmental groups.About 75 percent of the nation’s roughly 200 coal-fired power plants are owned by utilities that control both generation and distribution.In 2023, utilities across the United States incurred about $3 billion in losses by running coal-fired power plants when it was cheaper to buy power from lower-cost, less polluting sources, according to RMI, a nonprofit research organization focused on clean energy. About 96 percent of those losses were incurred by plants that controlled both power generation and distribution, the organization said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      There’s a Program to Cancel Private Student Debt. Most Don’t Know About It.

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      More than a million borrowers who were defrauded by for-profit schools have had billions of dollars in federal student loans eliminated through a government aid program. But people with private loans have generally been excluded from any relief — until recently.Navient, a large owner of private student loan debt, has created, but not publicized, a program that allows borrowers to apply to have their loans forgiven. Some who succeeded have jubilantly shared their stories in chat groups and other forums.“I cried, a lot,” said Danielle Maynard, who recently received notice from Navient that nearly $40,000 in private loans she owed for her studies at the New England Institute of Art in Brookline, Mass., would be wiped out.Navient, based in Wilmington, Del., has not publicized the discharge program that helped Ms. Maynard. Other borrowers have complained on social media about difficulties getting an application form. When asked about the program and the criticisms, a company spokesman said, “Borrowers may contact us at any time, and our advocates can assist.”So a nonprofit group of lawyers has stepped in ease the process: On Thursday, the Project on Predatory Student Lending, an advocacy group in Boston, published Navient’s application form and an instruction guide for borrowers with private loans who are seeking relief on the grounds that their school lied to them.“We want to level the playing field and let people know, instead of having it be this closely held secret,” said Eileen Connor, the group’s director.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More