Lawyers Exempt from GLB

Attorneys, breathe a sigh of relief.

The D.C. Circuit has ruled that lawyers do not have to follow the privacy regulations of Gramm-Leach-Bliley.

The Federal Trade Commission had tried to apply to law to the legal profession, which would require them to send out privacy notices. GLB applies to financial institutions.

Judge David Sentelle wrote:

"When we examine a scheme of the length, detail and intricacy of the one before us, we find it difficult to believe that Congress ... intended to undertake the regulation of the profession of law — a profession never before regulated by 'federal functional regulators' — and never mentioned in the statute," Sentelle wrote.

"To find this interpretation deference-worthy, we would have to conclude that Congress not only had hidden a rather large elephant in a rather obscure mousehole, but had buried the ambiguity in which the pachyderm lurks beneath an incredibly deep mound of specificity, none of which bears the footprints of the beast or any indication that Congress even suspected its presence," the judge said.

Douglas Ginsburg, the Chief Judge of the DC Circuit, agreed. The other judge and new U.S. Chief Justice, John Roberts, did not take part in the decision.