Insights

Following the 10th Circuit's April 21, 2026, decision affirming the disallowance of Liberty Global’s $2.4 billion deduction under the codified economic substance doctrine, I.R.C. § 7701(o), Liberty Global filed a petition for panel rehearing or rehearing en banc on June 5, 2026. That petition has since drawn significant amicus support from various industry groups representing large taxpayers, as discussed below.

The Department of War (DoW) is immediately suspending Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) Phase II requirements, which had been scheduled to take effect on November 10, 2026.

In Utech, Inc. v. United States, No. 24-1586 (Fed. Cir. June 24, 2026), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit clarified that in most cases, a pre-award protest must be filed before the proposal submission deadline to avoid the Blue & Gold waiver rule.  This decision, while nonprecedential, is in line with U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) precedent, which has long held that pre-award protests must be filed before the proposal submission deadline.

This news bulletin is provided by the International Trade Group of Crowell & Moring. If you have questions or need assistance on trade law matters, please contact Anand Sithian or Simeon Yerokun or any member of the International Trade Group.

On July 1, 2026, EPA proposed the sixth Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR 6), which will require public water systems (PWS) to monitor 30 unregulated contaminants — including certain PFAS chemicals — but not microplastics. For now, EPA is using other tools, such as the Contaminant Candidate List (CCL), to learn more about microplastics before requiring PWSs to monitor for them.

As part of its ongoing effort to conform the Cost Accounting Standards (“CAS”) to generally accepted accounting principles (“GAAP”), the CAS Board published a final rule rescinding CAS 408 (Accounting for costs of compensated personal absence) and CAS 411 (Accounting for acquisition costs of material).  The CAS Board also rescinded CAS 404 (Capitalization of tangible assets) and CAS 409 (Depreciation of tangible capital assets) but retained certain requirements of CAS 404 and 409, which will be located in new paragraphs of CAS 405 (Accounting for unallowable costs).  Specifically, the CAS Board retained the requirements currently located at CAS 404-50(d)(1), CAS 409-50(e)(5), CAS 409-50(j)(1), and CAS 409-50(j)(4), which the CAS Board explained are necessary to protect the Government’s interests.  Otherwise, the CAS Board determined that the requirements of CAS 404, 408, 409, and 411 overlapped with GAAP such that GAAP “may be applied reasonably as a substitute for CAS to support contract cost and pricing.”

We are pleased to announce that Crowell & Moring and Crowell GovCon Strategies will be exhibiting at Farnborough International Airshow (FIA 2026), one of the world's premier aerospace, defence and space events. FIA is where the aerospace, defence and space industry comes together. It is where deals are made, partnerships are formed, and the future direction of the sector takes shape. For businesses operating in this environment, navigating complex regulation, competing for government contracts, protecting critical intellectual property and managing international trade across multiple jurisdictions demands the right legal and strategic counsel.

On July 6, 2026, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed SB 315, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Safety Measures Act (the Illinois Act), to establish a framework for AI safety, transparency, and accountability for the world’s most powerful AI models. The governor’s approval follows unanimous passage of the bill by the Illinois House and nearly-unanimous support in the Illinois Senate in May. 

On July 2, 2026, the Department of War (DoW) issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) setting out a framework to implement the prohibition on acquisition of covered printed circuit boards (PCBs) from “covered nations”—North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran—enacted under sections 841 and 851 of the National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAAs) for Fiscal Years 2021 and 2022, respectively, and codified at 10 U.S.C. § 4873.  DoW invites industry to respond to specific questions and provide comments on the ANPR by August 31, 2026.

As schools, athletes, and other entities continue to navigate the boundaries of the House Settlement (In Re College Athlete NIL Litigation, No. 4:20-cv-03919-CW), at least one recent decision made clear a court’s position on what qualifies as an Associated Entity under the settlement. As noted previously, the College Sports Commission (CSC) sent out a rules reminder in January regarding Associated Entities. Under the House Settlement, these entities include those

On June 25, 2026, the Federal Risk & Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) launched its Consolidated Rules for 2026, marking a significant turning point in how the U.S. government administers security authorizations of private sector cloud offerings. The Consolidated Rules apply to all variants of the FedRAMP ecosystem, including legacy "Rev5" authorization holders, as well as future certifications under the new 20x program. Importantly, the Rules are intended in part to transition Rev5 authorizations over to 20x, with the Rev5 authorization status expected to terminate by the end of 2028. 

The week of June 29 brought a flurry of regulatory activity from the Department of Transportation (DOT), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) impacting companies across sectors including airlines, supersonic aircraft manufacturers, drone operators, and owners/operators of critical infrastructure facilities.  A summary of the key developments is below.

On June 18, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that LOGZONE Inc., a defense contractor based in Huntsville, Alabama, agreed to pay $507,144 to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act (FCA) by knowingly failing to satisfy cybersecurity requirements in its contracts with the U.S. Department of the Navy. The resolution is the latest action under DOJ’s Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative and the first publicly reported settlement this fiscal year. It underscores a continued enforcement posture in which noncompliance with contractual cybersecurity obligations serves as the basis for potential FCA liability. Notably, this settlement did not arise from a whistleblower complaint but from a government-initiated assessment, signaling to contractors that proactive government assessments can pose enforcement consequences.

On June 26, 2026, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) took two major actions related to autonomous vehicles. First, NHTSA issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) proposing significant updates to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 135, which has governed light vehicle brake systems in passenger cars and light trucks since 1995.[1]  Second, NHTSA formally withdrew its January 15, 2026 NPRM, which had proposed the Automated Driving System-Equipped Vehicle Safety, Transparency, and Evaluation Program (AV STEP), a voluntary program for vehicle manufacturers, fleet operators, and system integrators of autonomous vehicles and automated driving systems.

On June 4, 2026, Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI-5) introduced a bill that would limit the ability of people and entities seen as threats to U.S. national security to obtain and enforce patents. If enacted, the Prohibiting Adversarial Patents Act of 2026 (H.R. 9142) would leverage use of patent law as a national security tool, with consequences for companies operating in technology-intensive sectors, including drones, telecommunications, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and advanced manufacturing. The proposed legislation, currently under review by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, is particularly focused on persons and entities with connections to the People’s Republic of China.

RICO was built for the mob. But Congress gave trade secret victims access to it in 2016, and a recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit decision shows that access is real.

On June 25, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell, No. 24-1068, resolving a circuit split over whether the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) preempts state law failure-to-warn claims challenging EPA-approved pesticide labels. In a 7-2 opinion, the Court held that FIFRA expressly preempts state tort claims that would require a manufacturer to add or modify warnings on a pesticide label, at least where the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has evaluated the relevant risk and approved the label, whether with warnings reflecting the agency’s assessment or without a corresponding warning.

On June 22, 2026, President Trump signed two executive orders, “Securing the Nation Against Advanced Cryptographic Attacks” (Quantum Security EO) and “Ushering in the Next Frontier of Quantum Innovation” (Quantum Innovation EO), marking the most significant federal action on quantum technology since the Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act of 2022, which directed agencies to harden their information systems against quantum-enabled hacking. The orders seek to speed the development of quantum computers, which are advanced processors that can calculate multiple possibilities simultaneously and thus solve problems exponentially faster than traditional computers. At the same time, the orders look to protect against the danger that quantum technology can “break” traditional encryption by easily decoding it. Of particular note for government contractors, the Quantum Security EO directs agencies to update federal acquisition regulations to require contractors by 2031 to adopt information processing standards that resist quantum-enabled codebreaking.

On June 17, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ( National Security Division (NSD) announced that it had issued a declination for Robert Bosch GmbH (Bosch) relating to potential violations of the Export Control Reform Act, 50 U.S.C. § 4819 (ECRA). Specifically, the DOJ declined to criminally prosecute Bosch’s violations of the Export Administration Regulations’ (EAR) Foreign Direct Product Rule (FDPR), which apparently resulted from two Bosch subsidiaries’ export of products and software manufactured with equipment that was the direct product of U.S. software or technology to Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. and its “Entity List” affiliates, including Huawei Tech. Investment Co., Ltd., Hong Kong (collectively, Huawei). The same day, the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) announced a parallel civil administrative settlement with Bosch.

Two significant recent developments illustrate the Trump administration’s increasing focus on policing of hospital contracting practices that limit health plan network design flexibility. On June 16, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division and Ohio attorney general filed a proposed consent decree resolving their civil antitrust suit against OhioHealth. (Prior Alert) Two days later, the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) released a memorandum quantifying the potential economic effects of a broader ban on the types of contracting restrictions at issue in the OhioHealth case and the DOJ's parallel suit against NewYork-Presbyterian. This alert updates our prior coverage of the OhioHealth complaint and summarizes both developments.