NCLA’s King George III Prize Crowns Former SEC Chair Gensler 2024’s Worst Civil Liberties Violator

/EIN News/ -- Washington, DC, June 11, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Administrative State’s biggest abuser of civil liberties in 2024 was former Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler! After weeks of online voting for the New Civil Liberties Alliance’s Fifth Annual “King George III Prize,” Gensler defeated 31 other rights-violating bureaucrats in a campaign on social media. The “winner” was announced last night at an event in Washington, DC.

Gensler earned the Prize in part for overseeing construction of SEC’s “Consolidated Audit Trail” (“CAT”), the largest government-mandated mass collection of personal financial data in American history. Without any statutory authority, SEC is forcing brokers, exchanges, clearinghouses and alternative trading systems to capture and send detailed information on every investor’s trades in U.S. markets to a centralized database. NCLA is suing to stop the CAT in our Davidson, et al. v. Gensler lawsuit. Gensler also continued SEC’s illegal “Gag Rule” that forbids every American who settles a regulatory enforcement case with the agency from even truthfully criticizing their cases in public for the rest of their lives. NCLA’s Powell, et al. v. SEC case aims to overturn the “Gag Rule.”

NCLA also presented the National Center for Public Policy Research with our George Washington Award for Client Bravery last night. NCLA represented NCPPR in the lawsuit against SEC that persuaded the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to overturn Nasdaq’s “Board Diversity Rules,” which sought to impose gender, race and sexual orientation quotas on corporate board membership for Nasdaq-listed companies. NCPPR is also a Plaintiff in Davidson v. Gensler and NCLA’s client in our suit against unconstitutional SEC rules that would require public companies to disclose their climate-related business risks and mitigation procedures.

NCLA honored Tim Harper and Marc Wheat of Advancing American Freedom with the George Washington Award for Best Amicus Curiae Brief, which they submitted in Davidson v. Gensler. Alexander J. Phipps of Antonin Scalia Law School took home the Student Note Award accompanied by a $10,000 prize to be split with the George Mason Law Review for his timely piece: “Interpreting the APA’s Triggering Provision for Formal Adjudication After Loper Bright.” It addresses implications of NCLA’s historic overthrow of Chevron deference at the Supreme Court in Relentless, Inc. v. Dept. of Commerce and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.

NCLA released the following statements:

“For the fifth year, NCLA’s King George III Prize highlights the true abusers of Americans’ civil liberties—unelected bureaucrats. Former SEC Commissioner Gary Gensler is our newest ‘winner’ for overseeing one of the largest information grabs in our nation’s history. His Consolidated Audit Trail program is something right out of George Orwell’s 1984, with Big Brother tracking every stock market trade Americans make. Chair Gensler may have been unelected, but this award holds him accountable for violating the civil rights of millions of Americans.”
— Karen Harned, Director of Engagement, NCLA

“This year’s nominees for America’s Worst Bureaucrat were a true rogues’ gallery of civil liberties violators. But former SEC Chair Gary Gensler stood apart as most deserving of the ignominy the King George III Prize brings.”
— Mark Chenoweth, President, NCLA

ABOUT NCLA

NCLA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group founded by prominent legal scholar Philip Hamburger to protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the Administrative State. NCLA’s public-interest litigation and other pro bono advocacy strive to tame the unlawful power of state and federal agencies and to foster a new civil liberties movement that will help restore Americans’ fundamental rights.

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Joe Martyak
                    New Civil Liberties Alliance
                    703-403-1111
                    joe.martyak@ncla.legal