North America: Consumer Protection

AI companies operating across the United States are increasingly finding themselves pulled in two directions at once. On one side, a growing patchwork of state laws purports...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided four arbitration cases in 2025, each addressing a different piece of the process: agreement formation, scope, waiver, and judicial oversight of ongoing arbitration proceedings. Individually, they generated the usual case-specific commentary. But read together, they tell a bigger story: The Second Circuit is done treating arbitration agreements as a special category of contract that gets the benefit of the doubt. Going forward, they will be evaluated like any other agreement.

The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau's revised Section 1071 final rule introduces substantial changes to small business lending data collection requirements, including a dramatically increased coverage threshold and narrowed scope. This comprehensive discussion examines whether these modifications still achieve Congress's fair lending objectives while exploring the operational challenges, competitive opportunities, and potential risks that lenders must navigate before the January 2028 compliance deadline.

On July 20, a New York state court denied a motion to dismiss New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit alleging that the operator of a peer-to-peer payment network violated New York Executive Law § 63(12).

On July 10, 2026, the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection announced the adoption of its “Click-to-Cancel” rule requiring businesses to provide consumers...

A federal court has issued a preliminary injunction blocking California's enforcement of SB 343, the state's recyclability labeling law, just months before its scheduled October 2026 enforcement date. The court found that key provisions of the statute are likely unconstitutionally vague and that the law impermissibly restricts protected commercial speech under the First Amendment. This decision significantly impacts companies that have been preparing compliance strategies for the law's strict recyclability

With many school leaders asking whether the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on transgender athletes affects existing policies and practices, New Jersey districts should be aware that state requirements governing...

The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights has launched a Title IX investigation into Smith College's policy of admitting transgender women and providing them access to campus facilities designated for women. This investigation represents a significant shift in federal civil rights enforcement under the Trump Administration's interpretation that Title IX protections are based on biological sex rather than gender identity.

A new Department of Homeland Security rule will replace the longstanding "Duration of Status" system with fixed admission periods for F-1 students and J-1 exchange visitors beginning September 15, 2026. This change creates unique immigration planning considerations for international student-athletes whose collegiate careers may extend beyond four academic years, requiring careful coordination between athletic eligibility and immigration status timelines.

This quarter's Ontario class action decisions reveal evolving judicial approaches to parallel proceedings, individual action stays, and the predominance test. Courts examined novel duty-to-recall...

Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing recall fraud, enabling bad actors to fabricate receipts, serial numbers, and product images at unprecedented scale and sophistication. As the U.S. Consumer Product Safety...

La popularité croissante des produits de soins personnels durables et conformes à une philosophie de beauté saine s’accompagne d’une hausse des risques liés à la publicité trompeuse et à l’écoblanchiment.