What did the 11th Circuit do to the CTA in December 2025, and what bills are pending?

On December 16, 2025, the Eleventh Circuit reversed the Alabama district court in National Small Business United v. Treasury. The appellate court held: (1) the CTA facially regulates economic activity with a substantial aggregate effect on interstate commerce, sustaining it under the Commerce Clause; (2) the CTA does not facially violate the Fourth Amendment (the plaintiffs had argued that compelled BOI disclosure to FinCEN was an unreasonable search). The ruling does NOT itself recreate domestic BOI filing duties — by December 2025, FinCEN had already narrowed the operative regulation in the March 2025 IFR. But it strengthens the statute's constitutional ground.

Three reasons the ruling is consequential even though it doesn't immediately change filing duties: (1) It weakens the broad constitutional attack on the CTA itself — future plaintiffs face a tougher path arguing the statute is facially unconstitutional. (2) If a future administration wants to reverse the March 2025 IFR and reinstate domestic BOI filings, the constitutional pathway is now cleaner — Treasury can be more confident the statute survives challenge. (3) It increases the likelihood that the long-term equilibrium is 'CTA in force with some regulatory relief' rather than 'CTA struck down constitutionally.'

Introduced January 15, 2025: H.R. 425, the Repealing Big Brother Overreach Act, would repeal the CTA in its entirety. Status as of the source-set reviewed: introduced and referred to the House Financial Services Committee — has NOT advanced further. This is a long-shot bill. It hasn't gathered the bipartisan momentum needed to clear committee, much less pass the House, much less pass the Senate. Don't plan around H.R. 425 becoming law. If it ever does, the entire CTA goes away — domestic and foreign reporting companies alike.

H.R. 736, the Protect Small Businesses from Excessive Paperwork Act of 2025, would extend the filing deadline for entities formed or registered before January 1, 2024 to January 1, 2026. It passed the House 408-0 on February 10, 2025 and was referred in the Senate on February 11. But its main premise was largely overtaken by FinCEN's March 2025 IFR exempting domestic entities entirely. H.R. 736's deadline extension is mostly relevant now only to foreign reporting companies — and the IFR already provides separate filing rules for them. If H.R. 736 becomes law, it's a modest belt-and-suspenders addition, not a regime change.

Most likely paths for the next 12-24 months: (1) Treasury finalizes the March 2025 IFR substantially as-is, formalizing the domestic exemption — this is the highest-probability path; (2) A future administration revises the IFR via new rulemaking, potentially reinstating domestic BOI filings — possible but slow; (3) Litigation tests Treasury's exemptive authority — possible but unlikely to succeed; (4) Congress passes meaningful CTA legislation — lowest probability given the current Congress's gridlock on financial regulation. The administrative pathway is the most consequential to monitor, not the legislative or judicial ones.