Texas Judge Blocks Contractor Rule on Labor Law Violations

A Texas judge issued a preliminary injunction on Monday against new regulations that require companies disclose labor law violations they committed in the past three years whenever they bid for a federal contract worth at least $500,000. The regulations, which implement a 2014 executive order, were set to take effect today. In the court order, Judge Marcia A. Crone wrote that the business groups that sued over the regulations "properly demonstrated immediate and ongoing injury to their members if the rule is allowed to take effect." Crone said the regulations' public disclosure and disqualification requirements "are nowhere found in or authorized by the statute" that they rely on. In addition, she said the regulations "appear to conflict directly with every one of the labor laws they purport to invoke by permitting disqualification based solely upon 'administrative merits determinations' that are nothing more than allegations of fault asserted by agency employees and do not constitute final agency findings of any violation at all."

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