As the world awaits the next term of Donald Trump, marketers and advertisers are contemplating the potential changes in consumer protection regulations. While certain aspects of federal regulation and enforcement may have been relaxed during Trump’s first term, the Federal Trade Commission’s (“FTC”) consumer protection enforcement mandate is expected to remain a significant priority, although the pathways may differ significantly from the Kahn Commission.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) has survived a Supreme Court challenge that threatened to render its source of funding unconstitutional. In CFPB v. Community Financial Services Assoc. of America, the Supreme Court, by a ruling of 7-2, approved the ability of the Federal Reserve to provide operational funds to the CFPB. Opponents of the CFPB unsuccessfully argued that the only permissible means of funding should be a congressional appropriation.
Andrew Lustigman, Chair of Olshan's Advertising, Marketing & Promotion's Group and Co-Chair of the firm’s Brand Management & Protection Group, was quoted in a Corporate Counsel article (subscription required) on the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that the Biden administration had likely violated the First Amendment for “coercing” social media platforms to take down “disfavored” content from their sites that it deemed to be misinformation about topics such as COVID-19 or the 2020 elections.