Compliance Stuff

President Donald Trump on Dec. 11  issued an executive order , challenging state laws regulating artificial intelligence. The order directs the attorney general to establish a task force within 30 days focused on litigation against state AI laws. It also empowers the secretary of Commerce to publish a review of “onerous” state AI laws within 90 days and restrict federal broadband funds to states whose AI laws are found to be objectionable. It directs the Federal Trade Commission to issue within 90 days a policy clarifying how the agency’s prohibition on unfair or deceptive practices applies to AI systems. The Federal Communications Commission must within 90 days initiate proceedings to consider creating a federal reporting and disclosure regime for AI models that would pre-empt conflicting state requirements. The White House Special Advisor for AI and Crypto and the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology shall jointly prepare a legislative recommendation establishing...

Employers across the country can continue to maintain noncompete agreements as their state laws allow after a federal court in Texas struck down the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) proposed ban on most noncompete agreements on Aug. 20. The rule prohibiting most existing and new noncompete agreements was scheduled to take effect Sept. 4. Judge Ada E. Brown of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled that the FTC didn’t have the authority to issue such a broad action and that its rule was “arbitrary and capricious.” “[Brown’s] first line of attack was ruling that the agency didn’t have the power to issue the rule because Congress only authorized it to issue procedural rules to address unfair methods of competition, not substantive rules,” said Jonathan Crook, an attorney in the Charlotte, N.C. office of Fisher Phillips. Brown found that the rule is arbitrary and capricious because it is unreasonably overbroad without a reasonable explanation, aimed to impose ...