What’s Next For Conflict Minerals Rules After D.C. Circuit Decision?

On April 14, 2014, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (D.C. Circuit) issued its long-anticipated ruling in the industry challenge to the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) conflict minerals rules, and – as we forecast in a previous blog post – free speech issues proved to be critical to the Court's decision. In fact, the First Amendment challenge to the rules' requirement that companies self-identify as "not conflict-free" was the only issue on which the Court sided with the industry challengers, as it rejected the various other challenges the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and other industry groups had lodged to the breadth of, and burdens imposed by, the SEC's conflict minerals rules. A copy of the Court's full decision is available here.