Good morning. Risk & Compliance Journal’s Mengqi Sun reports on a ruling by an Alabama federal judge, which said the Corporate Transparency Act, a sweeping bipartisan anti-money-laundering law passed in 2021, was unconstitutional, leaving its future uncertain.

• Origins of the suit: The National Small Business Association, a small business advocacy group, filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Treasury Department and its leaders in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama in 2022, seeking to block the CTA. NSBA argued the bill was unconstitutional because it infringes on protected rights of state sovereignty, privacy and due process.
   
• The decision: U.S. District Judge Liles C. Burke, in a ruling Friday, sided with the small business group, saying that the CTA was unconstitutional. Judge Burke raised questions about the corporate formation requirements imposed by the bill, a process which is usually left to state governments, and noted that the law applies to corporate entities even if the entity conducts business only within a single state or does no business at all. The judge added that the CTA’s ownership disclosure requirements gave the government “unfettered legislative power.”
   
• Reactions to ruling: Todd McCracken, president and chief executive of NSBA, welcomed the ruling, saying it “justifies the concerns of millions of American businesses about how the CTA is not only a bureaucratic overreach, but a Constitutional infringement.” But many supporters of the CTA, including the U.S. banking industry and anticorruption groups, are cautioning about the impact of striking the law.

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JetBlue Airways and Spirit Airlines call off merger deal.

JetBlue Airways and Spirit Airlines terminated their merger agreement, weeks after a judge ruled that the $3.8 billion deal would reduce competition and harm cost-conscious fliers.

The airlines had appealed the judge’s January ruling, but some analysts said overturning it would probably be a long shot. JetBlue and Spirit said Monday that they had come to the decision that they probably couldn’t overcome the legal and regulatory hurdles.

Apple fined $2 billion in one of Europe’s largest antitrust actions.

The European Union fined Apple about $2 billion, saying the iPhone maker set unfair rules for developers of music-streaming apps. The fine was one of the EU’s largest-ever antitrust penalties.

The findings: The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, said it found the company violated antitrust rules by restricting app developers from telling users about alternative ways to subscribe to music-streaming services. The commission said it ordered Apple to change its practices.

The implications: The move could mark the start of a wider battle between the bloc’s regulators and the tech giant.

• Four former top Twitter executives sued Elon Musk, saying he owes them a collective more than $128 million in severance.
   
• The lawyers who won a historic verdict against the National Association of Realtors and brokerage firms are turning to a new target as part of their antitrust litigation: Warren Buffett.
   
• The former finance chief of Donald Trump’s family business admitted Monday to lying to investigators handling the former president’s civil-fraud case.
   
• An audit by U.S. regulators in response to a midflight Alaska Air incident in January found that Boeing allegedly failed to comply with quality-control requirements in manufacturing.

China’s high-wire act: downshifting growth without slipping into stagnation.

It is the end of the Chinese growth miracle as we know it, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping seems fine with that.

The question now is whether he can steer the country onto a new course—and keep the rest of China on board.

• China Drops Only Regular Press Briefing by a Senior Leader

• The U.S. and its Middle East allies are turning to airdrops of food aid into Gaza, a stopgap measure reflecting the impasse foreign powers face in addressing a humanitarian crisis and ending the Israel-Hamas war.
   
• Escalating payroll costs and diners’ dwindling tolerance for higher checks are putting independent restaurants in a squeeze.
   
• The amount of outside software companies are tapping has skyrocketed in the last 10 years. CIOs say they’re leaning on other areas of the business to help them manage it—but that comes with its own challenges.

• The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that states lack the power to reject presidential candidates on the grounds they engaged in rebellion or insurrection against the U.S., a decision that restored former President Donald Trump’s name to Colorado’s ballot and ended similar challenges to his candidacy elsewhere.
   
• A U.N. report said there are grounds to believe sexual violence, including rape, occurred during the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and that there is clear and credible evidence that female hostages were raped.
   
• Nvidia’s meteoric surge has helped push the stock market to record highs. It also has some on Wall Street saying the “B word.”
   
• Nikki Haley has a big decision to make.
   
• Union workers in recent years have threatened to strike against Norfolk Southern and sparred with management over pay and safety practices. Now, workers are defending the freight railroad as an activist investor seeks to oust its leadership.

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