Biden Administration Seeks to Exclude Medical Debt from Credit Scores The Biden administration announced plans to develop new rules that would prevent unpaid medical bills from counting towards consumers’ credit scores. The new rules, which administration...
CA Assembly Passes Data Delete Act California’s Assembly passed a bill ( SB 362 ) that would let consumers request the deletion of data collected on them by third-party brokers with the click of a button, much like the way the Do-Not-Call Registry works...
CA Legislature Approves $25 Healthcare Worker Minimum Wage On the last day of this year’s regular session, California lawmakers passed a bill ( SB 525 ) that would phase in a nation-leading $25 minimum wage for workers at hospitals, nursing homes, and other...
Court Ruling Against Robinhood Could Let States Impose Tougher Rules on Broker-Dealers Massachusetts’ top appellate court upheld a first-in-the-nation rule holding broker-dealers to the same standard as investment advisers, which had been challenged by...
TX Judge Strikes Down ‘Death Star’ Law A county judge in Texas declared the state’s new so-called “Death Star” law preempting local ordinances, including those mandating water breaks for construction workers, “entirely unconstitutional...
Many Post-Pandemic Medicaid Disenrollments May Be Due to State Errors Federal officials have uncovered significant problems with the systems and procedures states have been employing to “unwind” Medicaid coverage protections put in place during the...
NHTSA Reverses Direction on MA Right to Repair Law The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) sent a letter to the Massachusetts attorney general’s office last week giving the state the go-ahead to enforce the right to repair law voters...
New UPS Labor Contract Averts Strike The union that represents over 300,000 UPS workers ratified a new labor agreement last week, preventing a strike that might have crippled the U.S. economy. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters said the contract will...
Nation’s First Lawsuit over Post-Pandemic Medicaid Terminations Three Florida residents have filed a lawsuit alleging health officials in that state aren’t notifying disabled and low-income residents about Medicaid redeterminations. The suit is the...
Lahaina Fire Insured Property Losses Estimated at $3.2B Catastrophe modeler Karen Clark & Company estimated insured property losses from the Lahaina wildfire at about $3.2 billion. With the death toll from the Maui fires having exceeded 100, they are the...
Red, Blue States Tackle Children’s Online Safety in 2023 Concern about the impact of social media on children and their online privacy prompted a flurry of legislation in the states this year. In Republican-controlled ones like Arkansas, lawmakers generally...
Workforce Development High Priority for State Lawmakers With virtually every sector of the U.S. economy suffering a major worker shortage, state lawmakers are taking steps to boost their workforces in the near- and long-term. To try to attract workers now Vermont...
Lasting Health Policy Changes from Pandemic A number of health-related state policy changes made during the COVID-19 public health emergency appear likely to remain in place indefinitely. Over the past three years, hundreds of states have sought to extend temporary...
Judge Dismisses Challenge to UT Porn Website Age-Check Law A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit challenging a law enacted earlier this year in Utah ( SB 287 ) requiring porn websites to verify the age of their users. U.S. District Court Judge Ted Stewart said...
PA Launches Infrastructure Workforce Development Program Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) issued an executive order directing up to $400 million in federal funding to a new infrastructure workforce development program. The Commonwealth Workforce Transformation...