Despite SCOTUS ruling, beneficial ownership reporting is still on hold

Last Thursday, the Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s injunction on the embattled Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), but we doubt there was any Champagne flowing at the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

It turns out that the law still can’t be enforced while a separate injunction—from a judge in the same district court—is in place, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Let’s recap. The CTA, which requires millions of companies in the US to file beneficial ownership information (BOI), was blocked nationwide on Dec. 3 by Judge Amos Mazzant of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

Except for a few days in December—when an appeals court paused the injunction before their own colleagues put it back in place—the nationwide ban had been in place until Thursday, when Justice Samuel Alito ruled that it would be lifted while the constitutionality of the CTA is before an appeals court, the Washington Post reported.

But many cases have been filed against the CTA, and on Jan. 7 another judge—a colleague of Mazzant’s in the Eastern District of Texas—put his own national ban on the CTA. That ban is still in effect, the WSJ reported, as “[t]he court docket in the case doesn’t show an appeal by the government.”

So…what’s next? Companies can keep submitting BOIs voluntarily, which hundreds of thousands have actually done since the CTA was first put on hold on Dec. 3. Oral arguments in the appeals court case are scheduled for March 25.