government regulation

The New York Times' Jack Healy reports about how Longmont, Colorado, and several other local governments that passed bans on fracking for natural gas are being sued: "state officials, energy companies and industry groups are taking Longmont and other municipalities to court, forcing local governments into what critics say are expensive, long-shot efforts to defend the measures." The bans in Longmont, Lafayette and in Fort Collins, Colorado, were overturned in court. Lafayette City Council even voted against appealing a legal judgment against its restriction on oil and gas development out of concern with the legal costs.

Politico reports that President Barack Obama plans to issue an executive order to develop privacy guidelines for commercial drones. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration would be put in charge of developing the guidelines.

The Federal Aviation Administration faces criticism for lagging in developing regulations about integrating commercial drones into U.S. airspace There is a September 2015 deadline for the FAA to issues rules on the operation of small commercial drones, Politico adds.

A major blow has been delivered today to Obamacare, Reuters reports: "The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit accepted one of the main legal challenges to the policy by conservatives opposed to an expansion of the federal government" and threw out the federal tax regulation that implements Obamacare subsidies available to people with annual incomes of up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

A federal court has dismissed a Texas search-and-rescue group's challenge to the Federal Aviation Adminstration's drone policy, the Wall Street Journal reports. The D.C. Circuit ruled that informal emails from regulators, expressing a view of what the law requires, aren't subject to judicial review.