Latest Breaking News

A Fifth Circuit panel has reinstated a nationwide injunction blocking enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act, three days after a different panel lifted it, causing turmoil in compliance offices.

The CTA, enacted as an anti-money laundering measure, requires that US entities that existed before 2024 disclose the identities of their beneficial owners—individuals who own or control the business—by Jan. 1, 2025.

Texas Top Cop Shop Inc., a firearm retailer represented by the federalist advocacy nonprofit Center for Individual Rights, challenged the law and a district court ordered a nationwide halt to enforcement on Dec. 3. That halt was lifted on Dec. 23 by the panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that handles motions in an order that said, “The government has made a strong showing that it is likely to succeed on the merits in defending CTA’s constitutionality.”

Now a different panel of the same court, which will handle the merits of the appeal, has reversed course again.

“In order to preserve the constitutional status quo while the mertis panel considers the parties’ weighty substantive arguments, that part of the motions-panel order granting the Government’s motion to stay the district court’s preliminary injunction” is vacated, the merits panel wrote in an order Thursday.