All posts tagged: Overreach

SpaceX sues California agency, alleging political bias against Musk and regulatory overreach

SpaceX sues California agency, alleging political bias against Musk and regulatory overreach

SpaceX has filed a lawsuit against a California agency this week after the body rejected a proposal to increase the company’s launches from the state’s coastline to 50 per year.  The California Coastal Commission (CCC) made its decision at an October 10 meeting, despite the U.S. Air Force endorsing the plan on the grounds that more launches of Starlink and Starshield, the defense-focused unit, are critical to national security.  In the lawsuit, SpaceX says that the commission engaged in “naked political discrimination” when some commissioners cited the political activity of CEO Elon Musk, while also attempting to unlawfully regulate federal agency activities. The CCC declined to comment for this story. SpaceX did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. The first part of the complaint has gotten most of the headlines, and SpaceX will need to prove in court that the commission’s decision was substantially influenced by Musk’s politics. But the second part is arguably more substantial: what is the final legal authority over launch activities on a defense base, and do those activities count as …

Texas crypto company sues SEC for ‘overreach’ on digital assets

Texas crypto company sues SEC for ‘overreach’ on digital assets

:A Texas cryptocurrency company and an industry group sued the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, saying the regulator has overstepped its authority and asking a judge to rule that digital assets traded on exchanges are not securities. Fort Worth-based crypto company Lejilex and lobbying group Crypto Freedom Alliance of Texas (CFAT) claim the SEC has asserted jurisdiction over the industry without a “clear statutory mandate.” Lejilex says it seeks to run a cryptocurrency platform called Legit.Exchange. The company formed last year said it plans to list digital assets including those the SEC has deemed securities in lawsuits against Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., and Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange. Lejilex wants the court to rule that listing pre-existing tokens will not violate securities laws. “We wish we were launching our business instead of filing a lawsuit, but here we are,” Lejilex co-founder Mike Wawszczak said in a statement. A spokesperson for the SEC did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Both Coinbase and Binance have denied the …

FIFA Convictions Imperiled by Questions of U.S. Overreach

FIFA Convictions Imperiled by Questions of U.S. Overreach

Nearly a decade after police officers marched world soccer officials out of a luxury hotel in Zurich at dawn, revealing a corruption scandal that shook the world’s most popular sport, the case is at risk of falling apart. The dramatic turnabout comes over questions of whether American prosecutors overreached by applying U.S. law to a group of people, many of them foreign nationals, who defrauded foreign organizations as they carried out bribery schemes across the world. The U.S. Supreme Court last year limited a law that was key to the case. Then in September, a federal judge, citing that, threw out the convictions of two defendants linked to soccer corruption. Now, several former soccer officials, including some who paid millions of dollars in penalties and served time in prison, are arguing that the bribery schemes for which they were convicted are no longer considered a crime in the United States. Emboldened by the vacated convictions, they are asking that their records be wiped clean and their money returned. Their hopes are linked to the September …