Insights

On March 8, 2023, the Biden Administration announced a further opportunity for companies to take advantage of significant federal funding intended to promote clean manufacturing and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in federal procurement.  In line with the Biden Administration’s push to implement a clean energy economy (as we have previously covered, for example, here and here), the Department of Energy (DOE) will provide $6 billion in grants through the new Industrial Demonstrations Program to “accelerate decarbonization projects in energy-intensive industries and provide American manufacturers a competitive advantage in the emerging global clean energy economy.”  Funding for these grants will come from the recently passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act.

The Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration has issued final standards for the installation, operation, and maintenance of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations paid for with federal funds pursuant to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and other federal authorities. The standards, which go into effect on March 30, 2023, regulate the types of chargers that may be installed, as well as payment processing, labor, cybersecurity, and data privacy practices for EV charging infrastructure on federal highways.

On February 17, 2023, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that violations of the Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”) (the country’s first biometric privacy legislation) accrue for each incident of capture or dissemination of biometric information, and not only once for each data subject. Cothron v. White Castle Systems found based on the plain language of the statute that violations for collecting or disclosing biometric information occur at every scan or transaction. Cothron v. White Castle Sys., 2023 IL 128004. The court reached this conclusion while admitting the “absurd” implications, including that the ruling could result in damages of $17 billion. Id. at ¶ 40.

Join us for a webinar discussion of the U.S. Department of Treasury’s new final rule on the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). The final rule governs the state, local, and Tribal governments’ eligible uses of the $350 billion dollars of funds available under ARPA and imposes regulatory requirements on these recipients, which are flowed down to subrecipients and contractors. Our webinar will help contractors navigate the SLFRF, and cover the following key areas: