Insights

Washington – August 3, 2022: On August 1, a Crowell & Moring team filed an amicus brief in the two affirmative action cases pending before the Supreme Court on behalf of leaders at Howard University and other Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), as well as the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education, the national membership association of the nation’s 106 HBCUs. The HBCU leaders’ brief pointed to Harvard, the University of North Carolina, and other historically White universities’ long history of excluding Black students and its present-day effects, which include continued underrepresentation.

This month, pharmaceutical companies won significant victories in California and Oklahoma state courts in their ongoing battle with plaintiffs seeking to hold them responsible for the nation’s “opioid overdose epidemic” — an epidemic, as described by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), that has spawned thousands of lawsuits filed by states and localities across the country.

Could the end of Section 6(b) of the Consumer Product Safety Act (CPSA) actually be near?  Time will tell.  But last week’s development on Capitol Hill in the saga of “Section 6(b)” is noteworthy, and, one day in the not-so-distant future, may be recognized as the beginning of the end for this controversial provision of the law.