On March 20, 2017, a federal court in the Northern District of Texas denied the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s emergency motion for an injunction pending appeal challenging implementation of the Department’s conflict of interest rule and related exemptions. The court applied the standard for evaluating a preliminary injunction motion and concluded that: (i) the Department already had prevailed on summary judgment (see our blog available here); (ii) the potential for irreparable harm to Plaintiffs was small because the Department had proposed a delay in the rule’s applicability date; (iii) the Department would be harmed by an injunction because it “would interfere with the Department’s statutory authority, its expertise, and its policy-making role;” and (iv) the public interest weighed against granting an injunction because the Department had already made reasonable conclusions during the rule making process that the rule was in the public interest.  The case is Chamber of Commerce v. Hugler, No. 3:16-cv-01476-M, 2017 BL 87076 (N.D. Tex. Mar. 20, 2017).

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