FTC ban on worker noncompete agreements blocked by federal judge
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(WASHINGTON) — A sweeping federal ban on noncompete agreements — which was set to take effect for tens of millions of Americans nationwide on Sept. 4 — is now permanently on hold.
In a ruling Tuesday, a federal judge in Texas upheld a challenge to the FTC’s rule banning noncompetes, saying the government agency lacks the authority to put the ban in place.
An estimated 30 million Americans — 1 out of every 5 workers — are employed with noncompete agreements in industries ranging from tech to fast food. The FTC argues the agreements stifle workers’ ability to switch jobs and earn higher wages.
The FTC rule would have meant that anyone applying for a new job could not be forced to sign a noncompete. For workers with existing agreements, noncompetes would no longer be enforceable.
The decision from U.S. District Judge Ada Brown means those changes are effectively blocked.
In a statement to ABC News, FTC spokesperson Victoria Graham said the agency is “seriously considering a potential appeal” of the decision.
“We are disappointed by Judge Brown’s decision and will keep fighting to stop noncompetes that restrict the economic liberty of hardworking Americans, hamper economic growth, limit innovation, and depress wages,” Graham said.
The lawsuit was filed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce along with a Texas tax firm, which argued that the rule was too broad and that the FTC overstepped its authority.
“This decision is a significant win in the Chamber’s fight against government micromanagement of business decisions. A sweeping prohibition of noncompete agreements by the FTC was an unlawful extension of power that would have put American workers, businesses, and our economy at a competitive disadvantage,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Suzanne Clark said in a statement.
U.S. Republican Presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks during a rally at Herb Brooks National Hockey Center on July 27, 2024 in St Cloud, Minnesota. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, continue to travel to battleground states as Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance campaigns on behalf of himself and former President Donald Trump.
Here’s how the news is developing:
Harris cautions donors to ‘not take anything for granted’
Vice President Kamala Harris attended a fundraiser in San Francisco Sunday where she maintained her campaign “will win this election,” but cautioned donors to “not take anything for granted.”
“I know there’s a lot of enthusiasm out there,” Harris said, adding, “And you know, I’ve never been one to really believe in the polls — whether they’re up or they’re down.”
“What we know is the stakes are so high and we can take nothing for granted in this critical moment,” she continued. “So we will fuel our campaign as we have, with enthusiasm and optimism, but also with a deep commitment to the hard work it’s going to take, and to campaign.”
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi introduced Harris at the event, touting the accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration and the background of vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, several times calling the Harris-Walz ticket “the freedom ticket.”
“[Harris] makes us all so proud. She brings us so much joy. She gives us so much hope,” Pelosi said, calling the vice president “politically very astute.”
Two-time presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders predicted the campaign ahead will be “rough” but said he believes Vice President Kamala Harris “has a very good chance to win” the presidential election.
“She’s certainly going to win the popular vote by millions of votes, and I think she has a great chance to win many of the battleground states,” Sanders told “This Week” co-anchor Jon Karl on Sunday. “I think people are growing tired and fatigued with Trump’s consistent and outrageous lies and I think no matter what people may think of Kamala Harris, I think they want stability in the White House.”
The interview came just days after Democrats wrapped a lively convention where the party highlighted “freedom” as their overarching message for the campaign.
Asked about comments Harris made in her acceptance speech about ensuring the nation’s military strength, Sanders cautioned against increased spending.
“The United States is now spending more than the next 10 nations combined on defense,” he said. “I agree with the vice president. We want the strongest defense in the world, but I do think enough is enough. You’re seeing military contractors profits soaring, and I think we can have the strongest defense in the world without spending a trillion dollars a year.”
Sanders said Harris should focus her messaging on the economy and welfare of voters.
“We have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had in the history of this country,” he said. “So I happen to believe it’s important that we end the embarrassment of having the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth.”
Karl also asked Sanders if not giving the “Uncommitted” movement a platform at the convention was a mistake for Harris. Pro-Palestinian protesters and activists with the Uncommitted movement had repeatedly requested a speaking slot during the Democratic National Convention. The request, however, was denied by party officials.
Sanders has been one of the leading voices on Capitol Hill calling for a change in U.S. policy toward Israel as its war against Hamas in Gaza approaches its 11th month. He also has been outspoken against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I happen to think that we should not be giving another nickel to Netanyahu’s right-wing extremist government,” he said. “They certainly had a right to defend themselves against the atrocious Hamas attack. They never had the right, do not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people, kill 40,000, injure 80,000 and destroy the health care system, the educational system and the civilian infrastructure.”
He added, “American taxpayer dollars should not go to starve children in Gaza.”
Karl then asked Sanders about the nation’s immigration struggles and how Harris’ views on the southern border have shifted.
“When Harris ran for the Democratic nomination against you and others in 2020, she said she favored decriminalizing illegal border crossings. She even suggested she was she would be in favor of abolishing [Immigration and Customs Enforcement],” Karl said.
“We have a crisis at the border. We’ve got to make sure that fentanyl does not get into this country. We have to crack down on illegal immigration,” Sanders replied. “But we need comprehensive immigration reform. And I suspect that’s what the vice president supports.”
Republicans have attacked Harris by tying her to the high level of migrant encounters and apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border over President Joe Biden’s term. Harris has tried to counter that by highlighting her time as a prosecutor and support for the failed bipartisan border policy reform bill. Harris previously supported decriminalizing illegal border crossings and said she believed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “mission … is very much in question and has to be reexamined.”
ABC News’ Fritz Farrow, Will McDuffie and Gabriella Abdul-Hakim contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Democrats and Republicans have proposed vastly different policies on education – and one key difference highlights a battle that has been happening on the ground in states across the country.
Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs, and school vouchers have spurred debates at the local level for years.
ESA programs allow families to divert a designated amount of per-student public school spending to pay for expenses for private schools, microschools and homeschooling — including tuition, books, tutoring, transportation and more.
School vouchers similarly use public funds to allow students to pay for tuition.
Arizona passed the country’s first ESA program in 2011, and at least eight other states have followed its lead: Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah and West Virginia.
Former President Donald Trump has expressed support for ESAs and has proposed a plan that will allow parents to spend up to $10,000 a year per child in taxpayer money, “completely tax-free,” on alternative education or homeschooling costs.
The Democratic 2025 platform opposes using private school vouchers and tuition tax credits, opportunity scholarships, “and other schemes that divert taxpayer-funded resources away from public education.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former public school teacher who is running for vice president on Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential ticket, has opposed private school vouchers in the past.
In opposition to a school voucher policy proposal from Republicans in his state amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, Walz stated: “We are not going to defund our public schools at this time, when especially those hardest hit need them more than ever,” MPR News reported at the time.
The start of vouchers
Scholars trace the origins of school choice to the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, where the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregating public school students based on race was unconstitutional.
Anti-segregation efforts led to state-funded school voucher programs in some states like Virginia and Georgia, offering financial assistance to white students to attend all-white private academies known as segregation academies.
However, the first modern private school voucher program started in Milwaukee in 1990, as some communities of color saw vouchers as a chance to help low-income students of color attend private schools.
Vouchers also have been geared toward disabled students; however, vouchers often force students with disabilities to forfeit some Individuals with Disabilities Education Act protections because they are considered “parentally placed” in private schools.
These schools are not legally required to provide individualized or “appropriate” education to students and are not held to the same nondiscrimination standards as public schools.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, microschools, private schools, and homeschooling have seen a boom — and so has the availability for families to use vouchers or ESAs to fund tuition at these institutions or fund alternative forms of education and their expenses.
According to pro-ESA organization EdChoice, the number of students using ESAs has increased seven-fold between 2022 and 2024 to a total of more than 328,000 students.
As these programs continue to gain momentum, the debate about these policies continues.
Evolution of voucher and ESA programs.
The debate about ‘school choice’
How much ESA programs cost has varied from state to state — in Arizona, the ESA program has been estimated by the state governor’s office to cost the state $943,795,600 for the 2024 fiscal year for roughly 79,728 students. Meanwhile, in West Virginia, it could cost over $10 million for roughly 2,333 applicants to the 2022-2023 academic year of the program, according to the scholarship program report.
This has been one major source of contention around ESAs.
Critics of school choice, including West Virginia Education Association President Dale Lee, say that public schools are already under pressure due to underfunding and poor staffing. Shifting funds away from public schools will make it harder for them to thrive, Lee said.
“Because of the loss of funding, we’ve reduced the opportunities in the curriculum areas that they have,” said Lee, adding that vocational and technical schools have reduced the number of offerings they have and reduce the number of courses that secondary students have available.
In some cases, that includes the arts.
“As a high school teacher myself, the arts are one of the areas that for many students, that’s what drew them into the school, and that’s why they were continuing,” Lee said.
He said public education is supposed to be “the great equalizer” … “if you go back to the system of the haves and have nots, you eliminate that opportunity for students.”
Emily Kirkland, communications director at the Arizona Education Association, slammed some ESA programs for funding controversial purchases. These purchases have been dubbed “welfare for the wealthy” by critics, after a CNN analysis of state and federal data found that wealthy communities are disproportionately benefiting from these programs.
ABC affiliate KNXV-TV in Arizona analyzed ESA data for the 2022-2023 school year and found that some of the money was used for purposes that have been condemned by critics, including ski resort passes, trampoline parks and ninja warrior training centers, aeroponic indoor gardens, pianos and more.
Expenses in some states, like Arizona, are approved by program staffers.
Supporters of school choice, including president and CEO of pro-school choice EdChoice Robert Enlow, applauds the transparency, arguing that its more insight into specific expenditures than is publicly known from public schools. He adds that the expenses allow families to tailor their education to their individual needs.
“You can see in Arizona, every single minute of every single day where every single dollar is going in the ESA program, I challenge you to do that in public schools, right?” said Enlow. “You may not like where the dollars are going. There may be an issue of whether you like it, but the reality is, you know exactly where they’re going.”
Enlow adds that these programs allow students to take an individualized approach, noting that those who may have different needs based on disability, neurodiversity, and other needs can make adjustments based on those needs.
He adds that criticism over spending doesn’t take into account that, in some cases, families are buying what schools would buy: “It’s OK if a government system buys $1,000 per classroom Lego set, but it’s not OK if a family does it?”
It is unclear how successful alternative education like microschooling or homeschooling can be. Rules and regulations dictating microschool and homeschool requirements are determined by each state’s Department of Education. For example, the National Microschooling Center notes that some microschool educators do not need to be licensed teachers and some institutions do not need to follow state academic standards.
Enlow notes that as these kinds of educations become more popular, the question about what regulation should look like and how success is measured is being asked: “You can’t put a one-size-fits-all system of regulation on a system that is meant for families to have individual options and choices.”
“Successes are in children making progress towards what makes them a successful human being, a successful strategy for coping and for living and for being successful right in life,” Enlow said. “We believe, for example, that families want to have knowledge about how their kids are doing on a test, but we don’t think this is the only way to go.”
Critics are concerned about the lack of regulations and accountability about the quality of education, success of the institution and the stability of the institution.
“I called microschools the food trucks of the education industry, because they can open up, go wherever they want, and close down very quickly,” said Josh Cowen, author of “The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers.”
Cowen calls alternative education “a predatory environment where private schools and microschools are promising the world to each of these kids,” making it hard for families to know what the truth is because of the lack of oversight and measures of success.
He continued, “It could take months, if not years, for a parent to understand that they’ve gone to a school that has substantially altered their child’s academic trajectory. Or worse, it could take three or four years, and by then, it’s too late. And so that’s where you need oversight.”
In West Virginia, Lee argues that the school choice program has contributed to a teacher shortage, citing poor teacher pay, poor school funding and poor resources that contributes to low moral “when you’re seeing the dollars go to these microschools and learning pods where there’s no accountability.”
Enlow argues that adding more education paths for students could lead to improvements in public schools: “Who’s going to really buy a system where we’re just trying to let it continue the way it is without any kind of challenge?”
