In May 2015, the CfA filed a lawsuit against the
Securities and Exchange Commission, seeking to compel the agency to promulgate a regulation requiring corporations to disclose their political contributions that would inform investors how corporations are spending their money. In January 2016, Judge
Rosemary M. Collyer of the
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the suit, ruling that the plaintiff had not demonstrated that SEC had a "clear legal duty" to open a rulemaking proceeding or that its failure to do so was
arbitrary and capricious. Weismann said that "Given the extent to which Mr. Adelson's wealth derives from Macau and his dominant role in funding Republican candidates, it seems highly likely that illegal foreign money has made its way into American elections." A spokesman for the Las Vegas Sands Corp. denied the allegations, In December 2015, the CfA asked the
U.S. Department of Justice to investigate
David H. Stevens, the chief executive of the
Mortgage Bankers Association and the former commissioner of the
Federal Housing Administration, for possible violations of "
revolving door" ethics laws. The
National Legal and Policy Center joined this call several months later. In January 2016,
OpenSecrets published a report showing that the largest contributors to the campaigns of Senator
Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, were the tenants of a commercial building that the senator owns in
Chattanooga. Stevens of CfA said that a tenant's ties to Corker raise questions on whether it was paying
fair market value in rent. Liberty Counsel, which responded to the request on Davis' behalf, refused to comply, arguing that the documents were preliminary and private records not subject to the Act. Funding for the project, and for the Campaign, was not disclosed, but in August 2016 Ken Glueck of
Oracle confirmed that Oracle, who had been conducting a
high-profile lawsuit against Google, was one of the funders. In 2017, the group petitioned to unseal the divorce records of
Andrew Puzder, who was at the time
Donald Trump's nominee to become the
United States Secretary of Labor. Puzder's ex-wife called the group's attempt to unseal her divorce records an "unfair invasion of my personal life." The group also filed a lawsuit arguing that the
United States Department of Justice is failing to comply with a provision in the
Freedom of Information Act that requires government agencies to make public "statements of policy and interpretations which have been adopted by the agency." In March 2017, CfA and other groups asked Oregon Attorney General
Ellen Rosenblum to investigate solar panel sales practices that "are designed to trick homeowners into buying or leasing solar panels" in violation of Oregon's Unlawful Trade Practices Act. The request to Rosenblum "singled out one company: California-based
SolarCity." Both Richard and the contributor denied wrongdoing, saying that the allegation of
pay to play was false. Frelinghuysen hired lawyers following the complaint; his campaign adviser said that the complaint was "politically motivated." In July 2017, CfA sent a letter to the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate what it says are a pattern of unscrupulous sales practices in the residential solar market. ==References==