President Bush Signs into Law the "Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008"
Client Alert | 1 min read | 08.14.08
After much anticipation, the President signed the “Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008” into law today. The conference report passed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 424 – 1 on July 30, 2008; and passed in the Senate by a vote of 89 – 3 on July 31, 2008. The Act calls for broad reform in the regulation of consumer product safety and the operations of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), including the following notable provisions:
- Requiring tracking labels for children’s products, effective 1 year after enactment;
- Imposing a progressive ban on children’s products containing trace amounts of lead, effective 180 days after enactment;
- Requiring third party testing and certification of certain children’s products;
- Requiring manufacturers of durable infant and toddler products to provide consumers with a postage-paid consumer registration form with each such product, effective through CPSC regulations to be promulgated within 1 year of enactment;
- Permanently banning three types of phthalates (DEHP, DBP, BBP) in concentrations above 0.1 percent while temporarily banning three others (DINP, DIDP, DnOP) in children's products, effective 180 days after enactment;
- Establishing a publicly available, searchable, accessible database of consumer reports of harm within 1 year of enactment;
- Expanding CPSC personnel and funding, and broadening CPSC authority to recall products and modify corrective action plans;
- Granting CPSC expedited rulemaking power and charging CPSC with promulgating implementing regulations;
- Enacting whistleblower protection for employees of manufacturers, private labelers, distributors, and retailers;
- Imposing tighter control on imported and exported consumer products; and
- Significantly increasing civil penalties to $100,000 per violation or up to $15 million for a related series of violations as well as increasing criminal penalties from a maximum of one year to a maximum of five years.
The Act became effective upon enactment today, however certain provisions are not effective immediately, as specified by the Act.
Insights
Client Alert | 7 min read | 10.29.26
On 8 October 2026, Crowell & Moring, King's College London, and the Competition Law Center at George Washington University co-hosted the 7th EU Competition Law Conference at De Warande in Brussels. Mark Meador, Commissioner at the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), delivered the opening keynote address, followed by four panels bringing together practitioners, regulators, academics, and in-house counsel to discuss the latest developments in EU, UK, and US competition law enforcement. Among other things, the panels examined algorithmic pricing; the European Commission's (Commission) new guidelines on exclusionary abuses under Article 102 TFEU (Article 102 Guidelines); the impact of dominant positions in merger reviews; and lessons from the enforcement of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act.
Client Alert | 3 min read | 10.29.26
What University Licensors Should Learn From TexasLDPC v. Broadcom
Client Alert | 2 min read | 10.28.26
Debriefing to Dead Briefing: How to Avoid Dismissal by Identifying “Required” Debriefings
Client Alert | 7 min read | 10.27.26
