INSIDE COMPLIANCE – Loyola University Chicago School of Law

Regulating Minors in Digital Spaces

February 23, 2026Journal of Regulatory Compliance

With the digital age, young children are gaining access to social media accounts. Child influencers are being put into the spotlight before they can understand the impact a lack of privacy can have on their lives. Children cannot meaningfully consent to having a digital footprint, states have a compelling interest in regulating child participation online. These legal safeguards are necessary for both the financial and psychological health of children in digital spaces. Just as states have long regulated child labor in the entertainment industry, the modern regulation of social media should provide the same protection for minors on social media.

Digital Content Regulationsafetysocial media

Super Bowl Betting and the Rise of Prediction Markets

February 19, 2026CFTC, Sports

The Super Bowl remains the most watched sporting event in the United States, drawing billions in legal and illegal wagers each February. In recent years, a new form of wagering known as prediction markets has emerged, allowing users to trade on event outcomes in ways that resemble both sports betting and financial derivatives. These trading platforms raise compliance challenges because they intersect with both federal derivatives regulation and state gambling laws. At the same time, the NFL has taken their own stance, which is to restrict prediction markets from advertising around the Super Bowl. As a result, prediction markets tied to the Super Bowl exist in a regulatory gray area that demands clearer oversight to protect consumers and legal betting markets.

CFTCGamblingPredictive MarketsSports

AI Data Centers and Rising Electric Bills

February 18, 2026Artificial Intelligence

Electric bills are rising in many places, and the rapid expansion of AI data centers is adding new pressure to the power system. The big issue is how the electric grid pays for the infrastructure needed to serve rapidly growing electricity demand tied to AI. Serving that demand can require costly upgrades to the electric grid as well as securing additional electricity supply. When those costs are recovered through broadly applied rates instead of being assigned to the large new loads that triggered them, residential customers can see higher bills. State commissions and federal regulators influence these outcomes through tariffs, cost-allocation rules, and market design. As AI electricity use accelerates, questions of fairness and reliability have moved to the forefront of energy regulation.

artificial intelligenceJournal of Regulatory Compliance

The Shift from Lawmaking to Enforcement: State Privacy Regulation and Multi-State Coordination in 2026

February 18, 2026Privacy & Security

The United States has reached a critical inflection point in data privacy regulation. Today, twenty states have adopted comprehensive privacy laws creating an increasingly complex array of regulatory requirements that interstate businesses must adhere to. Since the federal government has yet to enact universal privacy legislation and none coming in the foreseeable future, companies face mounting stress to navigate divergent state requirements while contending with a historic shift toward coordinated multi-state enforcement efforts.

California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)data privacyfederal data privacy lawsPrivacy CompliancePrivacy Law

Trump’s Executive Order Signals Federal Disruption for New State AI Laws

February 18, 2026Artificial Intelligence

In the absence of comprehensive federal artificial intelligence (AI) legislation, states have moved aggressively to regulate AI. Beginning January 1, 2026, several major state AI laws imposed new safety and accountability obligations on AI developers. Just weeks before those laws took effect, President Trump’s Administration issued an executive order signaling a shift toward federal deregulation and preemption. The result is a looming conflict between state enforcement and federal resistance that is likely to continue to define the United States AI regulation in 2026.

Synthetic Media, Real Harm: Regulating AI-Generated Deepfakes

February 18, 2026Artificial Intelligence, Ethics

Carolyn Nsimpasi
Associate Editor
Loyola University Chicago School of Law, JD 2026
The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has enabled the creation of highly realistic synthetic media, commonly known as deepfakes. These AI-generated images, videos, and audio recordings can convincingly replicate real people, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish truth from fabrication. While deepfake technology has legitimate uses in entertainment, education, and accessibility, its growing misuse presents significant social, political, and ethical risks. As a result, the regulation of AI-generated deepfakes has become an urgent necessity.

AIdeepfakeEthicsRegulationunethical

Adderall Shortages: Regulatory Compliance and Enforcement Risks in the Big-Pharma Ecosystem

February 17, 2026FDA

Since October 2022, the United States has been grappling with an ongoing shortage of Adderall, a cornerstone prescription stimulant for millions of Americans. What began as intermittent shortages due to manufacturing disruptions has evolved into a prolonged supply constraint affecting patients, providers, and regulators. Behind this shortage lies a complex overlap of regulatory frameworks, legal reporting obligations, and compliance risks that are present across the pharmaceutical industry. Thus, the Adderall shortage is not simply a manufacturing hiccup. It is a case study in how overlapping regulatory regimes can collectively constrain supply in ways that neither regulators nor companies can easily fix in real time. Thus, ensuring sustainable access to ADHD medications and promoting proper use will require clearer authority, better data integration, and shared accountability across drug regulators and the Big-Pharma industry. Without these reforms, shortages will remain a recurring crisis to manage, rather than a systemic problem to prevent.

adderallADHDBig PharmaDEADSCSA

The Real Problem with Affordable Housing in America is Not Large Institutional Investors

February 13, 2026Regulation

“To preserve the supply of single-family homes for American families and increase the paths to homeownership,” President Donald Trump signed an executive order on January 20th, 2026, preventing “large institutional investors” from buying “single-family home[’s].” The definitions of “large institutional investor” and “single-family home” are to be determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, by February 19th. However, even with an expansive definition of what constitutes a “large institutional investor,” this executive order seems likely to fall short of its intended goal. Large institutional investors account for too small of a share of single-family homeowners in the United States for this executive order to have any significant impact on housing affordability. Instead, to support housing affordability President Trump’s administration should focus on loosening credit standards, incentivizing home builders, and adopting economic policies to curb inflation, which in turn will lead to mortgage rate reductions.

Affordable HousingExecutive Orders

Farm-to-Table Regulation: The FDA’s Food Traceability Rule

February 11, 2026Uncategorized

Kendall Henry Associate Editor Loyola University Chicago School of Law, JD 2027 From potato chips to produce, it seems like food recalls are announced every other day. In today’s global supply chain, a single ingredient may move through countless hands, multiple countries, states, and facilities before reaching shelves. This makes it extremely difficult to identify …
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Can Personal Posts become Professional Problems?

February 10, 2026Employment

Social media is an unavoidable part of everyday life, it is how people communicate and document their experiences. However, it is very easy for an informal post to go beyond the intended audience of close family and friends, reaching the general public. This means that one’s persona on social media can be seen by employers as a proxy for their professionalism and personal judgment. While the internet operates as a virtual “Wild West” with little to no rules, federal organizations offer some guidance as to employees’ communication and expression on social media like the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Ultimately it is on the employees to understand the risks a social media presence poses and what protections exist.

EmploymentNLRAsocial media