Welcome to the 2016 Mid-Year Report From the BakerHostetler Securities Litigation and Regulatory Enforcement Practice Team. The purpose is to provide a periodic survey, apart from our team Executive Alerts, on matters...more
The SEC’s increased use of its own "home court" for enforcement proceedings has triggered constitutional challenges to SEC administrative proceedings (APs). See "Defendants Challenge SEC’s Increased Use of Administrative...more
The Eleventh Circuit Friday joined three others in concluding that Congress intended Respondents must wait until appeal from the Commission to have a Court consider their challenges to the Constitutionality of the SEC’s...more
The Supreme Court declined to hear Bebo v. SEC, 799 F. 3d 765 (7th Cir. 2015), a suit challenging the SEC’s venue selection. The Court’s order left standing the decision of the circuit court affirming the dismissal of the...more
The SEC continues to prevail in actions brought challenging its venue selections. On March 28, 2016, the Supreme Court denied a request for a writ of certiorari in Bebo v. SEC, 799 F. 3d 765 (7th Cir. 2015). Ms. Bebo’s case...more
Recently, in the consolidated cases of Charles Hill, Jr. v. SEC (No. 15-12831) and Gray Financial Group, Inc. v. SEC (No. 15-13738), the U.S. Court of Appeals for Eleventh Circuit heard oral argument on the question of...more
Laurie Bebo, CEO of Assisted Living Concepts, initially got some sympathetic words from the U.S. District Judge who felt constrained to turn away her constitutional challenge to the SEC’s administrative forum: The Court...more
The battle over the constitutionality of the SEC’s administrative forum now moves to the U.S. Eleventh Circuit. The appellate court issued an order Wednesday, denying the SEC’s bid to upset the trial court’s preliminary...more
Suits challenging the SEC’s forum selection decisions continue to proliferate. As the trend has unfolded the Commission posted a memo on its website discussing the issue of forum selection and has proposed modifications to...more
The citadel of the SEC’s administrative forum has been under assault from several vectors over the past year or so, as a chorus of dissenting Respondents have mounted increasing challenges to its constitutional legitimacy, as...more
Defendants continue to pound nails into what may be to be the SEC’s coffin that its administrative proceedings are unconstitutional. If the genie is out of the bottle it’s hard to tell what the far reaching implications...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held yesterday that federal District Courts do not have subject-matter jurisdiction to entertain challenges to ongoing SEC administrative enforcement proceedings where the...more
The first Court of Appeals to rule in the recent round of challenges to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s administrative enforcement mechanism has held courts lack authority to consider the matter. The US Seventh...more
The SEC’s administrative forum has been under increasing scrutiny over the past year. Now the SEC has removed an ALJ from a high-profile case, after he refused the Commission’s “invitation” to provide a no-bias affidavit in...more
May defendants charged in SEC administrative proceedings challenge the constitutionality of those proceedings in federal district court? The determination of whether district courts have subject matter jurisdiction over such...more
While serving as General Counsel to California’s Business, Transportation & Housing Agency, I was from time to time asked to respond to ersatz summons and other documents issued by “Our One Supreme Court”. Given that these...more
Section 929P(a) of the Dodd-Frank Act provides that the SEC’s authority in administrative penalty proceedings is “coextensive” with its authority to seek penalties in federal court. The plaintiff in Bebo v SEC argued the...more
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 made numerous, and significant, changes to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s regulatory powers particularly with respect to regulated professionals...more