Proposed Bill Would Hobble SEC’s Administrative Court

The “Due Process Restoration Act of 2015,” proposed by New Jersey Republican congressman Scott Garrett, would raise the SEC’s burden of proof in its administrative court proceedings and empower defendants to request termination of a cease-and-desist order. These changes “would effectively eliminate the use of the administrative forum, at least in contested cases,” says New York Times writer  Peter J. Henning. The SEC’s administrative proceedings have come under fire from a number of directions, and recently the SEC itself proposed rule changes that would address many issues that have been raised, but those proposals were not enough to satisfy critics.