Overnight Regulation: Court rules against Trump travel ban | Gorsuch hands down first ruling | Generic meds get big win

Welcome to Overnight Regulation, your daily rundown of news from the federal agencies, Capitol Hill, the courts and beyond. It’s Monday evening, Congress is buzzing away and the Supreme Court has swung into action with a series of rulings. 

 

THE BIG STORY:

Trump’s travel ban takes another beating.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday ruled against President Trump’s so-called travel ban, delivering another blow to the administration as it waits for the Supreme Court to decide whether to intervene.

In no small part, the ruling resulted from Trump’s own Tweets, which undermined his case that the executive action was not a ban by explicitly calling it one.

{mosads}

The California-based court affirmed in large part the Hawaii district court ruling blocking parts of the order, which temporarily banned nationals from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S., suspended the entry of all refugees and reduced the cap on the admission of refugees from 110,000 to 50,000 for the 2017 fiscal year.

In a unanimous ruling Monday, a three-judge panel on the court said Trump’s order does not offer a sufficient justification to suspend the entry of more than 180 million people on the basis of nationality.

Though the Immigration and Nationality Act gives the president broad powers to control the entry of foreigners, the judges said the president’s authority is subject to certain statutory and constitutional restraints.

Lydia Wheeler has all the details here.

 

ON TAP FOR TUESDAY 

Hearing: Promoting Security in Wireless Technology

Hearing: Lawsuit Abuse and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act

Hearing, Appropriations: Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies

Hearing: Immigration and border patrol

Peterson Institute event on renegotiating NAFTA

 

REG ROUNDUP: 

Finance: Neil Gorsuch makes his first Supreme Court ruling! 

The Trump-appointed justice wrote a ruling with unanimous backing from his fellow justices, saying that regulations for debt collectors do not extend to companies that purchase debts.

Gorsuch relied on the plain text of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act in finding that Santander Consumer USA does not qualify as a debt collector because it purchased the $3.5 billion portfolio of auto loan debts it had been hired by CitiFinancial to collect.

Because the law defines debt collectors as “those who regularly seek to collect debts ‘owed … another,’” Gorsuch said the statute’s plain language seems to focus on third-party collection agents regularly collecting for a debt owner instead of a debt owner seeking to collect debts for itself.” 

Read more from Lydia here.

Immigration: Birthright citizenship should not depend on your parents’ genders, the Supreme Court decided unanimously on Monday. 

The court held in an 8-0 ruling that the gender line Congress drew in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 is “incompatible” with the Fifth Amendment’s requirement that all people must be treated equally under the law. 

The law required unwed fathers to have 10 total years of U.S. residency, including five years after the age of 14, to confer citizenship on a child of theirs who is born overseas. Unwed American mothers, meanwhile, were only subject to a one-year U.S. residency requirement to give their children U.S. citizenship.

The ruling struck down the law, which made it harder for children of unwed fathers to obtain birthright citizenship than children of unwed mothers. 

Get the full story here.

Health: It’s a generics party, and everyone’s invited! Manufacturers of copycat “biosimilar” medical products will be able to bring their drugs to the market faster after a unanimous Supreme Court decision Monday.

The court in Sandoz v. Amgen ruled 9-0 in favor of generic drugmaker Sandoz in a dispute with rival company Amgen. The court ruled that manufacturers of low-cost biosimilars don’t need to wait an extra six months after FDA approval to launch their product. The ruling is expected to save consumers — and the U.S. health system — billions of dollars. 

Sandoz is the generics arm of the drug company Novartis.

Read more from Nathaniel Weixel here.

Environment: Chemical plant safety standards are off the agenda until at least Feb. 20, 2019, according to the the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The agency will delay implementation of an Obama-era chemical safety rule for nearly two years while it reassesses the necessity of the regulation.

The move comes after the EPA delayed the regulation in March amid discussions over the rule’s impact on businesses. 

Devin Henry has the story here.

Environment: Trump administration attorneys are arguing that the federal court system cannot weigh in on its March approval of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline.

Justice Department attorneys said in a legal filing late Friday that the State Department’s right to approve cross-border pipelines stems directly from President Trump’s authority under the Constitution, and the Montana federal court hearing the case must dismiss it.

The attorneys argue that the approval is therefore not subject to the Administrative Procedures Act or the National Environmental Policy Act, the laws that environmentalists are using to try to get the courts to block the pipeline.

Read the full story from Timothy Cama here.

Tech: COVFEFE, the meme that won’t die, is now the name of a bill that would classify presidential social media posts — including President Trump’s much-discussed tweets — as presidential records.

Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) introduced the legislation, which he entitled the Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement (COVFEFE) Act, on Monday.

Joe Uchill has the story here.

 

ALSO IN THE NEWS 

Supreme Court to examine legality of patent reviews

Trump officials to unveil plan to cut factory rules this week (Reuters)

U.S. cancels new protection for endangered West Coast whales (The Associated Press)

 

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