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ARTICLE · 20 FEBRUARY 2026

Federal Court Invalidates Biden-Era HSR Reforms

Foley & Lardner LLP
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On Thursday, February 12, 2026, a federal court in Texas threw out a series of sweeping changes to the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) premerger notification system that had been adopted in the closing months...

United StatesAntitrust/Competition Law
Benjamin Dryden
Benjamin Dryden
Diane Hazel
Diane Hazel
Gregory Neppl
Gregory Neppl
Alan Rutenberg
Alan Rutenberg
Richard Lee
Richard Lee
Jacqueline Beveridge
Jacqueline Beveridge
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On Thursday, February 12, 2026,  a federal court in Texas threw out a series of sweeping changes to the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) premerger notification system that had been adopted in the closing months of the Biden Administration. These changes represented  the largest shift in premerger notification practice in the nearly fifty-year-old history of the HSR Act, requiring parties, among many other things, to stake an affirmative position on whether they compete with or supply products to the other side, to explain the strategic rationales for the transaction, to provide additional (sometimes, extensive) business documents, and to prepare English translations of documents written in foreign languages.

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