As he enters his second week in office, President Donald Trump is forecasting a desire to implement a muscular trade policy leaning heavily on the imposition of tariffs—potentially on a global basis—as a means of extracting favorable trade deals and other economic and political concessions from trading partners across the globe. As of this writing, much remains uncertain with respect to tariff implementation.  What is clear is that President Trump’s tariff-related warnings have commercial and political parties around the world on edge. 

Here we go again – another CTA update hot off the press. 

• In our last update, we reported that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed with the U.S. Supreme Court an emergency application to stay the injunction preventing FinCEN from enforcing the CTA, asking the Court to either stay the Texas district court’s December 3, 2024, injunction pending the Fifth Circuit’s merits review in Texas Top Cop Shop v. Garland (4:24-cv-00478-ALM), or, in the alternative, to treat the application as a “petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment presenting the question whether the district court erred in entering preliminary relief on a universal basis.” 

• On January 7, 2025, in a separate Texas case – Smith v. United States Department of Treasury (6:24-cv-00336) –  a federal judge in the Eastern District issued a separate order enjoining enforcement of the CTA against the plaintiffs in that case and staying the Reporting Rule on a nationwide basis. At this time, the government has not appealed in that matter.  

• But, on January 23, 2025, the Supreme Court granted the DOJ’s application in Texas Top Cop Shop, staying the nationwide injunction against FinCEN’s enforcement of the CTA. The stay will apply through the appeal process before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari.

On December 27, 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided United States ex rel. Camburn v. Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation and joined a growing list of federal circuit courts that have adopted what the Second Circuit called the “at least one purpose rule”. This rule provides that defendants have violated the Anti-Kickback Statute (“AKS”), 42 U.S.C. §1320a-7b so long as at least one purpose of the alleged remuneration at issue (as opposed to the sole or main purpose) was to induce patient referrals, even if there were other, legitimate reasons for the payment.