The need for our government to set forth consistent, predictable rules has never been greater, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is no exception.
Over the last year, the SEC has used its enforcement authority, rather than its rulemaking authority, to change longstanding, widespread, and previously uncontroversial business practices in the mutual fund space. This is not how the rule of law is supposed to work. So today, a broad alliance of four industry and public interest organizations—the American Securities Association (ASA), the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), the Financial Services Institute (FSI), and the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA)—have teamed up to file a petition for a rulemaking seeking to end the SEC’s penchant for regulation by enforcement. When the stay-at-home orders are finally lifted, American businesses will need to know that the law is what is says, and not what the SEC, years later, decides unilaterally what it should have been.