Monday, August 25, 2008

Court Challenge to Sarbanes-Oxley Fails

The New York Sun reports:
An effort to overturn the Sarbanes-Oxley Act has failed, with a federal appeals court upholding a nonprofit board that polices accounting firms.

The creation of the board, known as the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, is central to the 2002 law, which was passed after the accounting scandals involving Enron and WorldCom. Critics say the intensive auditing requirements imposed on public companies are expensive to comply with and are undermining American competitiveness against foreign companies.

At issue in the appeal was whether the creation of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board violated the Constitution's separation of powers clause by leaving the president with too little oversight. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decided Friday in 2-1 vote that the board, whose members can't be directly removed by the president, was constitutional.
One wonders how they can be removed.