U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Rule Changes

Lead plaintiff, prevailed at district court

The Hart-Scott-Rodino premerger notification form went largely unchanged for 48 years. When the Federal Trade Commission tripled its compliance burden in 2024, business groups sued—and a Texas federal judge just agreed with them.

Updated Feb 18

Rule Changes

Lead plaintiff in HSR rule challenge

The United States raised the minimum deal size requiring federal antitrust review to $133.9 million on February 15, 2026—up from $126.4 million the previous year. Companies planning mergers or acquisitions above this threshold must now file premerger notifications with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) and wait for government clearance before closing their deals.

Updated Feb 16

Rule Changes

Filed amicus brief supporting employers

When employers exit multiemployer pension plans, they owe a share of unfunded benefits—a calculation that hinges on assumptions about future investment returns. The IAM National Pension Fund changed its interest rate assumption from 7.5% to 6.5% in January 2018, weeks after the measurement date, and applied it retroactively to employers who had already withdrawn. The result: withdrawal liabilities tripled from $935 million to over $3 billion.

Updated Jan 21

Rule Changes

Lost lawsuit challenging $100,000 H-1B fee, December 24, 2025

On December 29, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security formally published its final rule replacing the H-1B lottery with wage-weighted selection in the Federal Register. Starting February 27, 2026, a software engineer offered $150,000 (Level IV wage) gets four entries in the pool; one offered $65,000 (Level I) gets one entry—an 8.5% selection chance versus the prior 25% random odds. The change targets fraud: 758,994 registrations competed for 85,000 slots in FY 2024, with 408,891 duplicate submissions for the same people, up 140% from the year before. Shell companies flooded the system; Disney laid off American IT staff and made them train H-1B replacements paid 40% less. On December 24, a federal judge upheld the separate $100,000 H-1B fee Trump imposed in September, rejecting a U.S. Chamber of Commerce lawsuit.

Updated Dec 29, 2025

Rule Changes

Plaintiff in a separate earlier federal suit challenging the fee

The Trump administration didn’t just tighten H‑1B visas. It put a $100,000 toll booth on “new” petitions—and dared employers to pay up. Now twenty states are trying to blow up that toll booth in federal court, calling it an illegal end-run around Congress.

Updated Dec 13, 2025