Defending Consumers, Strengthening Innovation, and Restoring the Rule of Law: This Week at the Center for Regulatory Freedom

Last week, the Center for Regulatory Freedom (CRF) filed five major regulatory comments across four federal agencies, advancing core principles of competitive markets, due-process-based enforcement, national security integrity, and meaningful economic freedom. Each filing reflects our mission: pushing back against overreach, insisting on transparency, and ensuring that public policy solutions genuinely improve the lives of American workers and consumers — not just in theory, but in practice.

Across aviation, intellectual property, mortgage finance, agricultural labor markets, and immigration verification, CRF delivered a clear message: regulation must be grounded in reality, bounded by statute, and focused on enabling — not suffocating — a thriving marketplace.

Below is a recap of last week’s milestones and why these efforts matter.

Protecting Consumers and Competition in Air Travel

The aviation marketplace is one of the most dynamic, innovative sectors in the global economy. Prices shift minute-to-minute, technology enhances the ticket-buying experience, and consumers today enjoy unprecedented options. Yet with this dynamism comes the constant temptation for regulators to stretch their authority far beyond what Congress intended — especially when wielding broad terms like “unfair” or “deceptive.”

CRF’s comments to the U.S. Department of Transportation urged the agency to bring clarity and restraint back to its evaluation of allegedly deceptive practices. For years, DOT has relied on evolving, often unpublished guidance that companies are expected to obey without any formal notice-and-comment rulemaking — the kind of “regulatory dark matter” that undermines transparency, encourages risk-averse compliance behaviors, and ultimately stifles consumer benefits.

Our filing called on DOT to:

• Restore clear standards for what truly qualifies as “unfair” or “deceptive.”

• Maintain neutral hearing processes, so agencies cannot substitute personal preference for legal due process.

• Avoid turning consumer-protection enforcement into backdoor price-regulation.

Consumers win when businesses have clear rules, strong incentives to innovate, and confidence that the federal government will enforce laws predictably, not arbitrarily. CRF will continue pressing DOT to build a fair regulatory foundation that supports the vibrant aviation market Americans rely upon.

Reining in Abusive Patent Challenges and Protecting America’s Innovation Economy

There is no American success story without American innovation — breakthroughs in health care, energy, computing, biotech, and beyond all depend on a foundational promise: that inventors who take risks will have reliable property rights if they succeed.

Unfortunately, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board has spent recent years drifting away from the role

Congress envisioned it when it created the system. Instead of providing a faster alternative to litigation, the PTAB has become a favored venue for repeated, duplicative challenges — where well-funded competitors wage war by exhaustion, not by merit.

CRF’s comments strongly supported the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s proposed reforms to stop the abuse:

• End multiple rounds of patent challenges on the same issues already tested in other proceedings.

• Require challengers to pick one forum instead of gaming multiple venues.

• Reinforce finality so that a patent upheld once isn’t perpetually open to attack.

These aren’t abstract principles — they are the lifeblood of startup formation, investment capital, and America’s global leadership. When uncertainty replaces predictability, investors shift resources elsewhere. When innovators cannot rely on patents, breakthroughs never come.

Our message is simple: restoring balance to patent enforcement safeguards the economic engine that drives American competitiveness.

Reviving a Competitive Mortgage Market — and Reducing Housing Costs

Housing affordability is at crisis levels. Families remain locked out of homeownership, mobility is stagnant, and supply lags far behind demand. While zoning rules and local barriers play major roles, so does the structure of the mortgage-finance system — and that system has become heavily tilted toward government-backed securitization at the expense of competitive, private-label alternatives.

CRF’s comments to the Securities and Exchange Commission urged a modernized regulatory framework for residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS):

• Reduce excessive disclosure micromanagement that has driven issuance underground into private placements.

• Focus transparency on the information investors actually need to manage risk.

• Remove structural barriers that prevent private capital from competing with the government-dominated channels.

The intended result? Lower mortgage financing costs, more liquidity, and real competition — which means more first-time and middle-class families get a fair shot at homeownership.

Strengthening private-sector participation is not just good financial policy; it is an essential step toward unlocking affordability nationwide.

Fixing H-2A Wage Rules to Help U.S. Workers and Secure the Agricultural Workforce

For years, domestic farmworkers have been left in the dust while regulatory incentives favored employers’ reliance on foreign labor — often with benefits American workers could never match. CRF is committed to restoring fairness in agricultural labor markets.

In our comments to the Department of Labor on the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR), we applauded the shift toward current, skill-tiered wage data that:

• Reflects real-world job requirements,

• Protects U.S. workers from wage depression, and

• Gives employers the lawful workforce flexibility they need.

But we also highlighted a glaring inequity: the longstanding requirement that H-2A employers provide free housing. In many agricultural regions, this shrinks the housing supply and drives local prices up, hurting domestic workers struggling to find affordable places to live.

Our recommendations urged the Department to:

• End the “no-cost housing” mandate for H-2A employees,

• Strengthen enforcement against employers abusing the program, and

• Restore fairness so domestic workers are not disadvantaged in their own communities.

American agriculture can — and must — be a place where domestic workers have equal opportunity to thrive.

Restoring Integrity to Employment Authorization and National Security Screening

During the prior administration, the federal government allowed millions of Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) to be automatically extended — even when eligibility or background information might have changed. That was not just bad policy; it was a direct vulnerability to national security and workplace integrity.

CRF welcomed DHS’s decision to end this automatic extension practice. The rule now requires a fresh vetting before employment authorization is renewed — the bare minimum Americans should expect.

In our filing, we stressed that simply stopping automatic extensions is not enough. DHS must:

• Ensure that individuals who lose authorization do not continue working unlawfully,

• Share relevant data with enforcement agencies, and

• End “sanctuary-style” employer protections that shield businesses exploiting unauthorized labor.

Work authorization is a privilege — one that must be safeguarded by rigorous screening, not automatic rollover.