Blue Sky Laws: Defending State-Level Securities Violations

Blue Sky laws are the anti-fraud security statutes in all 50 states in the United States. Most states adopted some variation of a uniform Securities Act back in the 1950s and the earliest of these were adopted in the 1920s. The laws vary by state and typically require issuers to register their offerings and provide financial details of the deal and the entities involved.

These security statutes generally prohibit certain conduct in connection with the offer and sale of securities. There are three main categories of prohibitions in most of the states' securities statutes. One is the sale of securities that are not registered. The second category is the sale of securities by people who are not licensed to sell securities. And, the third category is fraud in connection with the offer and sale of securities.