A Texas federal court has issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), which mandates US businesses to report stakeholder information to the Treasury Department. The court ruled that the CTA exceeds Congress's powers under the Commerce Clause, as it regulates entities regardless of commercial activity. The lawsuit, brought by Texas Top Cop Shop Inc. and others, argued that the CTA's requirements are unconstitutional. The government contends the law is necessary to combat illicit activities like money laundering.
Justice Clarence Thomas's concurring opinion in the recent Supreme Court decision on the Clean Water Act would severely limit Congress's power to legislate, endangering countless laws governing private business, including the federal ban on child labor, minimum wage, and workplace discrimination. Thomas argues that the federal government's authority over the "channels of interstate commerce" is limited only to the power to "keep them open and free from any obstruction to their navigation." This approach could gut much of the Clean Water Act and allow a chemical company to dump countless tons of a deadly poison into the Mississippi River.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a California law banning the sale of pork from pigs kept in confined spaces, rejecting a challenge by the National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation. The industry argued that the law violated the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution by forcing farmers in other states to change their practices to sell pork in California. The court voted 5-4 to uphold the lower court's dismissal of the lawsuit, with conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch writing the main opinion. The law mandates pig confinement spaces large enough to enable the animals to turn around, lie down, stand up and extend their limbs.
The Supreme Court has rejected a challenge to a California animal welfare law that would ban the sale of pork derived from breeding pigs housed in confined spaces. The majority said the measure, known as Proposition 12, did not unlawfully regulate pork produced in other states, as the challengers claimed. The ruling protects the ability of states to enact laws aimed at protecting the health and welfare of the public even if the measures have an impact out of state. The National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation sued in 2019, saying the measure violates a provision of the Constitution called the commerce clause, which has been interpreted to bar states from interfering with interstate commerce.
