On December 4, 2024, the District Court for the Eastern District in the Texas Top Cop Shop, Inc. v. Garland case issued a nationwide injunction against the FinCEN Corporate Transparency Act (the “CTA”) requirement to report Beneficial Ownership Information to FinCEN. On December 23, 2024, a panel for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the injunction issued by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas reinstituting the CTA requirement to report. Three days later -December 26, 2024- a different panel of the Circuit Court reinstituted the preliminary injunction. The Court set a briefing schedule and scheduled oral argument for March 25, 2025. As of today, the preliminary injunction continues to be in effect.
On Friday, December 27, FinCEN stated that reporting companies are not currently required to file beneficial ownership information with FinCEN and are not subject to liability if they fail to do so while the order remains in force.
On December 31, 2024, the Department of Justice filed a 150-page application (see link below) with the United States Supreme Court requesting that the Court stay the nationwide preliminary injunction issued by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in the Texas Top Cop Shop, Inc. v. Garland. The application submitted by the government requested that the Supreme Court stay the preliminary injunction while the matter is appealed arguing the Court “has traditionally applied a strong presumption that Acts of Congress * should remain in effect pending a final decision on the merits by this Court.”
The government also suggested that the Supreme Court “may wish to treat the application as a petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment on the question whether the district court lacked authority to enter a universal injunction, grant the petition, and set the remedial question for argument this Term.” For the Supreme Court to hear the matter (i.e., grant certiorari), as a matter of norm four justices must vote to hear the case. The government believes that certiorari would be proper since the lower court held the CTA, an act of Congress, unconstitutional.
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