Libertarian Business Group Mounts Court Challenge to SOX

A small Nevada CPA firm, Beckstaff and Watts and the conservative/libertarian Free Enterprise Fund has received certarori to present their case against Sarbanes-Oxley to the U. S. Supreme Court (a Court of Appeals previously ruled in favor of SOX and the government). The Free Enterprise Fund argues that the Public Companies Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) violates the separation of powers clause of the Constitution because the President does not appoint members and Congress does not control its purse strings. The court challenge has been in process for a number of months.

While I have a degree of ideological sympathy for the FEF, their case has virtually no chance of success; moreover, I would not be shocked to similar future legal actions being tagged as "frivolous." The history of tax protestors using "gold standard" arguments and similar literalist legal actions have had almost no success in recent decades. Like it or not, the PCAOB is here to stay; it is even possible after last fall's fiscal fiasco that GREATER regulation of the auditing industry may be in the future.