The Corporate Transparency Act is a fairly recent Federal law that requires small business owners to actively report information about some of those that they associate and work with. The Federal government is authorized to use this information for law enforcement purposes, and it is authorized to give this information to foreign countries as well for them to use. This puts small business owners in a difficult position, as they could start to get in trouble for things that others say with whom they privately associate.

For example, with the Paris Olympics, a boxer competing in women's boxing was claimed to originally be a man, and the news about this spread quickly, especially when another women dropped out after being hit. However, after the initial news, other news claimed that this boxer was female and had never been a man. Some of the people that spoke out apologized, but Paris has now launched an official criminal investigation into those who spread information online or said things about this boxer. The prosecutor specifically said that they would try to work with other countries to bring those that spoke "to justice".

If France can obtain the association information of small business owners, than those that are reported to our government (by force of law) could now be investigated by a country such as France. France has very different hate speech and bullying laws than the United States, and if you travel to Europe at any point, it is possible that you find there is a warrant for your arrest when you arrive.

Our government should not be actively collecting and using information about our private associations and authorize that information to be used for law enforcement purposes. This destroys trust and the ability to simply work with people, and it throws off our system of liberty.

The constitutional challenge that has been filed describes this issues in much more detail, and describes other issues not mentioned here. The Complaint and the Motion for Preliminary Injunction are both below. If the PDF's below do not show on your browser, you can download the PDF's at the links below as well.