WASHINGTON, D.C. — CFA Director of Investor Protection Corey Frayer filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) seeking access to all correspondence between Hal Scott and SEC leadership.

On September 17, newly-confirmed SEC Chairman Atkins led Commissioners in a vote on a “Policy Statement Concerning Mandatory Arbitration,” reversing decades of agency precedent on the subject. Consumer Federation of America demands to know if Hal Scott exercised any influence over the vote, so it has submitted a FOIA request for all communications between Scott, Chairman Atkins, all Commissioners, and staff.

“The right to your day in court is foundational to our democracy,” said Corey Frayer, Director of Investor Protection at Consumer Federation of America. “Forced arbitration is an attack on investor protection and transparency, the pillars the SEC was built on. If a serial litigant who opposes shareholder rights has the ear of the new SEC leadership, American investors deserve to know.”

Legal activist and Harvard Professor Hal Scott has a long history attacking shareholder rights. In 2020, Scott filed a proposal at Intuit to strip away shareholders’ rights to sue the public companies they’re invested in if they are harmed by mismanagement or fraud. Undermining shareholder rights and diminishing corporate accountability were seen as so toxic that Intuit’s board recommended against the measure, and more than 97% of its shareholders voted it down.

In 2018, Scott filed a similar proposal at Johnson & Johnson, a company that was so concerned about the optics related to gutting shareholder rights, they opted not to bring the proposal to a vote at all. Despite his deeply held view that shareholders should be barred from taking public companies to court, Scott took Johnson & Johnson to court, where he lost. While he has failed in both the courts and in the court of shareholder opinion, he is looking for success at the SEC.

This FOIA request is related to policy analysis regarding investor protection at Consumer Federation of America, an association of non-profit consumer organizations established to advance the consumer interest through research, advocacy, and education.