Even before the start of the new Trump administration, corporate DEI initiatives faced increasing scrutiny. With the new administration, DEI initiatives face even greater scrutiny. Following Trump’s January inauguration, the President and the Attorney General declared that the new administration intends to target what they have called “illegal DEI.” The administration’s approach creates regulatory and enforcement risks for companies and their executives with respect to DEI issues. And as detailed in a recent law firm memo, these developments could also give rise to increased corporate and securities litigation risks as well, as discussed below. The Winston and Strawn law firm’s April 28, 2025, memo entitled “Securities Litigation Risk in the Evolving DEI Landscape” can be found here.Continue Reading Corporate and Securities Litigation Risk in the New DEI Environment
For some time now, many commentators, including me, have been predicting that cybersecurity-related litigation could become an important part of the D&O litigation environment. And that may yet happen. For now, however, the results in the recent cybersecurity-related cases have been, from the plaintiffs’ perspective, not particularly promising. On July 7, 2016, in the latest of these cases to hit the skids, District of Minnesota Judge Paul Magnuson, in reliance on the report of the special litigation committee appointed to investigate the claims and in the absence of opposition from the plaintiff, granted the motions of the special litigation committee and of the defendants and dismissed the consolidated cybersecurity-related derivative litigation that had been filed against Target Corporation’s board. As discussed below, the plaintiffs’ track record in this type of litigation has been poor, which does raise the question whether this type of litigation will become a significant phenomenon. A copy of Judge Magnuson’s order in the Target Corp. case can be found