Small Businesses in the Courts: Regulatory Battles and a Major BOI Reporting Win

What's Moving Through the Courts

NFIB's Small Business Legal Center is participating in more than 40 cases in federal and state courts and at the U.S. Supreme Court, where it weighed in on five cases during the 2025-2026 term. The docket clusters around a few themes that reach small businesses directly.

Worker classification is the one most likely to touch a student venture. Several active cases challenge how independent contractor status is defined, which determines whether the person you pay to design your logo or staff your events is a contractor or an employee. The answer changes your tax obligations and your liability.

The rest of the docket covers vehicle emissions standards, environmental penalties and union labor mandates, all of which set the cost of compliance for businesses that operate physical spaces or fleets. On the property side, Fisher v. Ocean Springs asks whether Mississippi law improperly limits an owner's ability to challenge an urban blight designation, a label that can gut a property's value and open the door to seizure.

The scale is the argument NFIB keeps making. Federal regulations alone cost Americans more than $1 trillion. FinCEN's separate real estate reporting rule is projected to cost over $500 million a year, at roughly 2.5 hours per report, and that time falls on small businesses and title companies rather than on the agency writing the rule.

The BOI Mandate Is Off, and NFIB Wants It Repealed for Good

FinCEN issued the final rule on August 11, 2026, and it took effect August 14. U.S. companies no longer file Beneficial Ownership Information reports. Reporting companies no longer report information on U.S. person beneficial owners or company applicants, and U.S. persons no longer have to hand that information over to companies where they hold an ownership stake.

FinCEN is also deleting what it already has. The agency will remove information from its database on individuals it reasonably believes are U.S. persons.

The requirement still exists for one group. Entities formed under the law of a foreign country and registered to do business in a U.S. state or tribal jurisdiction still file, though they report only on foreign beneficial owners, not U.S. ones. If you have a cofounder abroad or formed the entity outside the country, check where you land before assuming you are clear.

NFIB is pushing Congress to repeal the mandate outright, and the distinction matters. What changed is a rule, and a future administration can write a different one. The Corporate Transparency Act that created the obligation is still on the books. Repeal is what would make this permanent.

Health care is the other item on NFIB's list. The organization continues to press for more affordable and flexible coverage options for small employers, which remains one of the hardest costs for a small team to absorb.

	Confirm where your entity was formed. The exemption covers companies formed under U.S. law. If yours was formed abroad and registered here, the reporting requirement still applies to your foreign beneficial owners.
	Note the effective date in your records. The final rule took effect August 14, 2026. Write it down alongside your formation documents so a future accountant or attorney is not guessing.

	Keep contractor agreements in writing. With classification unsettled in the courts, a signed agreement describing the scope, the pay and the working relationship is your best record if anyone questions it later.
	Follow the cases that fit your business. The NFIB Small Business Legal Center publishes case updates. If you run a fleet, a physical space or a contractor-heavy operation, those dockets are where your future compliance costs are being set.