Overview
- The Fifth Circuit, which denied the FTC’s stay request Thursday, made a Texas district court’s vacatur of the 2025 HSR rule effective immediately.
- FTC staff now accept the shorter, pre‑February 2025 Hart‑Scott‑Rodino filing, and they will also take the vacated 2025 form if parties choose to submit it voluntarily.
- The district court found the FTC exceeded its authority and failed to show benefits that reasonably outweighed costs, calling the expanded rule arbitrary and capricious.
- The change affects what must be included in filings but not which deals must file, the fees due, or the statutory waiting periods, and staff can still seek extra information through voluntary letters or Second Requests.
- The scrapped rule had required narrative overlap analyses and broader document production, and the FTC estimated average prep time would jump from about 37 hours to 105 hours per filing, which the court said the record did not justify.