ML Strategies

The accelerating advances in AI have heightened legislative, executive, and regulatory activities focused on its implications. In a series of articles, Mintz and ML Strategies explore the federal government’s actions in this area, such as the national AI strategic plan and upcoming US Senate forums aimed at forging consensus and informing future legislation.

Read the second edition of AI: The Washington Report, a joint undertaking of Mintz and ML Strategies covering potential federal legislative, executive, or regulatory activities related to AI.

Read the inaugural issue of AI: The Washington Report, a joint undertaking of Mintz and ML Strategies covering potential federal legislative, executive, or regulatory activities related to AI.

Our October 2022 Energy & Sustainability Washington Update covers the ongoing rollout of IRA clean energy provisions, the status of the energy permitting bill, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law opportunities, and National Clean Energy Week.

In this webinar, Anne Levin-Nussbaum, a Member in our Energy & Sustainability and Tax Practices and her colleagues at ML Strategies discuss the energy tax provisions, review the Act’s new direct funding opportunities and offer insights regarding the implementation of such funding programs.

The central tradeoff between a service’s affordability and the user’s right to privacy has been debated for the better part of two decades. The quickest jolt to the regulatory landscape may come via Federal Trade Commission (“FTC” or the “Commission”) enforcement. On August 11, the FTC issued an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“ANPR” or the “Notice”), asking the public to weigh in on whether new regulation is required to protect consumers and crackdown on “commercial surveillance.”

The next three weeks will be full of activity in Washington D.C., as the House of Representatives and Senate are working to push their legislative agendas to garner support from their constituents ahead of an August recess and before political “silly season” officially kicks in ahead of the upcoming mid-term elections in November. Here’s our latest update on what you can expect in Congress during the July work period.

In this post, the Mintz team breaks down the elements within the “American Data Privacy and Protection Act” (ADPPA) bill draft. Released to the public on Friday, June 3, this comprehensive bill touches on all facets of the privacy debate that has been ongoing in Congress for well over 20 years. 

It does not look as though Massachusetts will be state number 6 to enact a comprehensive data privacy law – or at least not the one that people have been talking about.  The Massachusetts Joint Committee on Health Care Financing has voted to send House Bill 4514, An Act Establishing the Massachusetts Information Security and Privacy Act to “study.”  This action by the influential legislative committee signals that this particular bill is not likely to advance during the current legislative session which concludes at the end of the calendar year.

Anyone who has spent any time around health care policymaking circles in Washington, D.C. has heard about the intense five-year cycle Congress goes through in order to reauthorize the biggest user fee programs at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Mintz previously published this wonderful explanation of the process complete with an estimated timeline for how this year’s reauthorization was likely to go. As a reminder, the current authorization for FDA’s various human product user fee programs – with the exception of the over-the-counter drug program that was freshly created in 2020 – will expire on September 30, 2022 with the end of the federal government’s fiscal year, unless they are renewed by Congress before that time.

Read about energy legislation and energy policy news, including President Biden’s FY 2023 request for $48.2 billion for the DOE, the Senate Climate Change Task Force’s proposal for energy independence, and the EPA’s Clean Air in Buildings Challenge.

On February 2, 2022, the Massachusetts Legislature’s Joint Committee on Advanced Information Technology, the Internet and Cybersecurity released a new draft of a bill designed to provide mechanisms for how personal information is used and to control how companies use such information.  This 65-page bill, known as the “Massachusetts Information Privacy and Security Act” or “MIPSA”, would be the first major piece of legislation related to data privacy passed since the Legislature updated the data breach legislation in 2019.