Capital Conversations: Noah Phillips, Commissioner, Federal Trade Commission

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Commissioner Phillips will join us to discuss data privacy and the COVID pandemic. Other topics may include the impact of new technologies in addressing the crisis, how the FTC and other privacy enforcers around the world are responding, the ways in which the FTC works with industry, and what today tells us about the future. Commissioner Phillips will also discuss the potential for a future federal privacy bill.

Featuring:

Noah Phillips, Commissioner, Federal Trade Commission

 

This call is open to the public - dial 888-752-3232 to access the call.

 

Event Transcript

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Dean Reuter:  Welcome to Teleforum, a podcast of The Federalist Society's practice groups. I’m Dean Reuter, Vice President, General Counsel, and Director of Practice Groups at The Federalist Society. For exclusive access to live recordings of practice group teleforum calls, become a Federalist Society member today at fedsoc.org.

 

 

Dean Reuter:  Welcome to a special Capital Conversations edition of The Federalist Society's practice group teleforum conference call as today we discuss the Federal Trade Commission. I'm Dean Reuter, Vice President, General Counsel, and Director of Practice Groups at The Federalist Society.

 

      As always, please note that all expressions of opinion are those of the expert on today's call. Also, our expert is speaking on behalf of himself, not on behalf of the FTC or his fellow commissioners. And this call is being recorded for uses of podcase in the future and will likely be transcribed. Finally, this call is open to the press, so be aware of that.

 

      Today, we are very fortunate to have with us FTC Commissioner Noah Phillips. He's been a commissioner since April 26, 2018. I think that was his confirmation date. So I give you early congratulations on your two-year anniversary coming up. He's going to give us some opening remarks of 10 to 15 minutes or so, but as always, we'll be looking to you, the audience, for your questions. So please have those in mind for when we get to that portion of the program. Commissioner Phillips, the floor is yours.

 

Hon. Noah Phillips:  Thanks Dean. I really appreciate the invitation to be here and the opportunity to speak to those who are joining us on this call. What was true in law school remains true today, which is The Federalist Society does such a great job of bringing so many different issues up for public discussion and it's always a pleasure, like it's a pleasure today, for me to contribute to that.

 

      So I want, briefly, to begin by thanking everyone for joining. I'm hoping that everyone is doing as well as they can be under these difficult circumstances that we all, as a nation, are facing. And offering a preemptive apology for the noises that may occur on this call. Like many others, I am working from home. And I have small children. So if we are interrupted, or if I go mute for just a moment, I apologize to everybody.

 

      I want today, first to update folks on what we are seeing and what we are doing at the FTC with respect to COVID-19. There are a lot of parts of the government that are responding in different ways. We have a role in that. And I want to talk briefly about that. And then I want to move to the context of data privacy, which is an issue very much in the public debate, both in Congress, and on editorial pages, at family dinner tables, and so on. It's something we've dealt with at the FTC for decades and this is a really interesting time for the public to be thinking about the issues that surround data privacy.

 

      What I'll address is what we're seeing, how folks, including government folks, are responding, what the FTC is doing, and some thoughts about the future. And then I'll open it up for questions.

 

      So let me begin again by going to what the agency is seeing with respect to COVID, generally. The basic answer to the question is, we are seeing a lot of complaints and those complaints reflect a tremendous amount of really unfortunate fraudulent conduct going on across the economy. To date, the last data I have reflects, in the last few months, 23,000 COVID-related complaints. About half of those report a loss that is a monetary loss. And the median loss is about $550. The total is just under $18 million in reports that we are getting of scams and frauds. They run the gamut in their nature. I doubt it will surprise the people listening to this call to learn, there's a lot of impersonation of the government. We sued, the other day, a company that was purporting to offer loans to small businesses in Rhode Island because the government is dolling a lot of stimulus in a lot of ways. That creates an opportunity for people to make misrepresentations and steal money from their fellow man.

 

      We're also seeing a lot of bogus health claims. People offering tests and cures for coronavirus that either don't exist or haven't been FDA approved. People hocking products that they were hocking five months ago now as cures for coronavirus. The list goes on and on and on. This is a very unfortunate thing that happens in a crisis. It's not specific to this one, but certainly the level that we're seeing is astounding. This is one of our principle focuses right now, is doing what we can to stop these kind of scams and to protect consumers, and small businesses—I mentioned that Rhode Island case a moment ago—protect consumers and small businesses from some of the predatory behavior that we see. That effort has just begun to enter litigation, but a lot of the effort occurs in the context of cease and desist letters.

 

      We're doing those on our own. But we're also partnering with other agencies. That includes the FDA sending out letters to stop bogus claims about treatment and about cures and about tests. And working with the FCC to target voice-over-the-internet providers who have been assisting or facilitating scam robocalls. Those efforts are the most efficient way that we can let companies know that we are watching, and if they don't change their behavior, enforcement can follow. In domain, they're successful but there is, as I began with, there's a lot of this bad conduct out there and we're looking to utilize the tools that we have and to leverage that with the tools that other agencies have to help stop some of the problem.

 

      And of course, we're continuing our long tradition of consumer outreach. For those who are interested, if you go to our website, which is ftc.gov, there's a lot of information, both about what we're doing, but also more importantly about what consumers can and should do when they face some of this conduct. The crisis involves lots of really big negatives. This stuff is, by no means, the worst of the impact. Obviously, there is health, and there's an economic crisis that goes along with it. But it is important for us to keep on the ball.

 

      So with that said and with that sort of update for your audience, I want to move over to data privacy. To me, now is a fascinating time to watch how consumers, not just in the U.S., but internationally, are interacting using the internet. We're bringing, right now, a tremendous amount of our lives online. And this is a teleforum, so this is using a technology which, while still critically important, is not quite as new. But in my own life, and to read press reports the lives of millions of Americans, we're bringing school online. We're bringing prayer online. We're bringing family time online. Many of us in the U.S. recently celebrated either the Orthodox or other Easter holidays, and Jews celebrated Passover. And gathering with families internationally and from across the nation, or even across the street using the internet. That's something that is now common. Obviously, we're shopping online. And many are visiting doctors online.

 

      So there's a lot of new utilization and increased utilization of some of the technological tools that we have. And many of those tools are free. Or at least free in the conventional sense. And in a broad sense, at least in my view, those are good things. It's better to be able to connect with doctors, to connect with teachers, to connect with family, to connect with leaders of our religious communities than it is not to have that access. And so certainly, in my view, we're better off in that regard, or in those regards, than we were in the last major pandemic, which was about 100 years ago.

 

      New technologies also create tools that can help government deal with public health crises in ways that it wasn't able to before. I think we've all seen press reports about contact tracing, even quarantine monitoring. And there's a broad debate about the steps governments are taking, whether those are good ideas. The extreme takes, at least in my mind, is what went on in Israel, where counterterrorism authorities were used, at least initially, to do contact tracing with the virus. And there's a big debate to be had about this. But there's no question in my mind that there are a lot of new technologies that government is using that can be used for good.

 

      I'd also add, we see a lot of innovation going on aimed at what I would broadly call public goods that isn't necessarily government related. Private companies stepping up to offer solutions that may help with some of the public health issues that we face. So in many respects, the privacy conversation that we were having nationally and internationally a few months ago has been replaced with a new privacy conversation. Not entirely different, of course, but very much focused on the new tools that people are using to live their lives, and the relationship of new technologies to the pandemic and some of the associated trends that we're seeing with the pandemic. So that makes for a very interesting opportunity to think about data privacy and where, as a nation, we are going.

 

      I'll take a moment to talk about what we're seeing from privacy authorities around the world. So in the U.S., there's the FTC. I'll talk about us in a minute. But to pick on a sister agency, Health and Human Services has put out an announcement with respect to the enforcement of HIPPA, which is our health privacy law, which is not enforced by the FTC. HIPPA can be an impediment to the provision of telehealth. And what HHS has announced is basically that they're going to use their discretion and not impose penalties for noncompliance with HIPPA in the administration with telehealth. I think that's a very good move. Telehealth is a very important thing. Privacy has its importance too, but if it's a question of a person's ability to get access to medical care or medical advice that they need, and a HIPPA violation, at least to me, and others may differ, that doesn't seem like a very difficult question.

 

      Internationally, we are seeing comments from privacy authorities. In the United Kingdom, the ICO, in continental data protection authorities signaling a recognition that we are in a kind of crisis—like anyone doubts that—and that they are sensitive to that fact. And so there's been announcements, for instance, in Europe, that a lot of the conduct that both governments are doing and that entities in the private sector are doing are consistent with their obligations under the general data protection regulation, the GDPR.

 

      At the FTC, the Chairman had sent out a statement that violations of the law, that we're going to be reasonable and flexible in its application. And take into account good faith attempts to provide needed goods and services. To take those into account when making enforcement decisions. So the law doesn't change, but we're going to look at the facts of a particular case in light of what's going on.

 

      We see a lot of input coming from the advocacy community and Capitol Hill focusing both on the government issues that I talked about a moment ago, the utilization of new technologies by the government for public health and other reasons, and also what's going on in the private sector. We see people calling out security flaws that they're finding and practices of companies that they think they violate either principles of privacy or even privacy law. And also a general awareness, I think, of some of the trade-offs that come with privacy. There was an interesting interview conducted last week of Charlie Warzel, who as I understand it, runs The Privacy Project at the New York Times, which runs a lot of op-eds related to privacy. And Warzel was talking about the value of some of the technologies and their utilization of data about individuals. That's an interesting conversation.

 

      One of the most important points that I think a lot of the continued attention on privacy has from Capitol Hill, from the advocacy community, is that it encourages companies, in particular where they are doing things that aren't good, quickly to change their practices. And we can have a later conversation about liability, but certainly, if there's a bug in your software and your platform is being used by a lot more people all of a sudden, we all want that bug fixed. And that's a really important thing.

 

      My view is that there are a lot of companies scrambling, just like there are a lot of nonprofits that are scrambling and families that are scrambling, churches and schools that are scrambling. And sometimes when entities scramble, mistakes can get made. But I do agree with the Chairman's statement, that we do want to be reasonable and flexible and we want to understand, in exercising our prosecutorial discretion, what are the underlying facts relating to the conduct at which we're looking. We don't want liability concerns about privacy to be the only driver for how decisions are being made. I mean, I've watched with amazement how quickly my children's education has gone online. That's really important to me, just as a personal example.

 

      The other thing I want to point to is a conversation that we often have, but I think is particularly relevant now about the role that regulatory barriers play. I'll give one anecdote. I won't name the company. But there was a large company that found a lot of toilet paper in Mexico. And consistent with, I presume Mexican law, or maybe just good marketing practices, the product was labeled in Spanish, not in English as it needed to be labeled under U.S. law, under a rule that we have. The company came and consulted with us and we advised them that we would not pursue an issue with them under the labeling rules that we have and they would be allowed to bring that toilet paper into the United States for sale, where it was needed. And I think that was the right decision.

 

      One additional thing that we're seeing, in a lot of different states, is a relaxation for purposes of the crisis of regulatory barriers to entry. And I'm thinking, in particular of the healthcare space. There was an announcement, for instance, in Massachusetts with respect to the licensing requirements for healthcare workers.

 

      The FTC, through our competition advocacy, has long, in litigation and in comments to state legislatures and otherwise, focused on some of the impediments to competition that regulatory barriers to entry have posed. And this is a very interesting time to watch the impact that some of these crisis-related relaxations in regulation have. My view is that we should study the effects, and if we don't see, for instance, declines in the quality of care, at the very least, we should think about the regulations that were in place to begin with. Because this is sort of what economists call a natural experiment in certain regards.

 

      I'll focus on telemedicine, and I mentioned earlier what HHS is doing. We have long put in advocacy that we're the same standard of care, let's say for in person consultations can be met, we've encouraged states to consider how greater access can benefit citizens. And I think that it's something that was true before, but is very much apparent now. So this is a really interesting time for us to be looking at some of these barriers to entry that regulation imposes.

 

      I want to finish—at least my remarks, and again, happy to take questions afterwards—with what I see and what I'm not sure about moving forward. First, while I detected some shift in the way that some public commentators, at least, talk about issues related to data privacy, I don't know whether the pandemic will fundamentally reorient the use. That remains to be seen. What I do hope, and what I called for long before the pandemic in public testimony, is that people will not be absolutists in the way that they discuss privacy. That they will recognize the tradeoff that comes with the sharing of data. There are costs. There are harms. But there are also a lot of benefits. And it's important, when we're talking about regulation, or penalty, or rulemaking authority to think about what those tradeoffs are and to learn from the experience that we're having. That's true with any privacy regime. It's just, I think, it's a little more apparent now.

 

      I do think, in particular, it ought to inform some of the policy discussion that's going on. So I'll take two examples of that, or three examples of that. The first is, in thinking about private rights of action, that's something that Congress is debating. Whether in a national privacy law, we ought to allow individuals the right to sue. When you do that, when you create a private right of action, there are a lot of things that happen along with it. One of those things is that some of the discretion that I've been describing that HHS is signaling, that FTC Chairman is signaling, that I'm signaling, that regulators in Europe are signaling, that discretion goes away. There's no reason to believe that for-profit trial attorneys will pivot in the context of a crisis. And there's a cost that comes with that. The ability of government to stop and breathe, you lose that ability where you set something out for a private right of action.

 

      The other thing a private right of action does is it also sides the law, or at least in one direction. To the extent, you've gone too far in whatever limitation on the functioning of the market that he regulation imposes, you've also created a problem where, in order to roll back the law, a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money. And it makes the law harder to change. So I think that's something everyone ought to have in mind.

 

      And the other thing I'll note is that the more state laws we have—there's a debate right now whether to include preemption in one uniform federal law—the more state laws that we have, the ability to pivot, the ability to move, the ability to be flexible or ever change the law, is much less so. And a number of people whose input matters, depends on what the lay of the land is, with respect to state laws. If you have one federal law, it's been blessed by people who represent the whole country. The way the internet works, there's the chance that with the variety of state laws, firms that want to do business across the states will have to meet whatever the highest standard is. And so, in effect, that state's law becomes the national rule. My view is that that's the problem in general, but certainly I think it's a problem that becomes more apparent in the context of a pandemic.

 

      I think I'll leave it with that and open it up for questions, if that's good with you, Dean?

 

Dean Reuter:  Absolutely. You put a lot on the table, so I appreciate that. I've got a couple questions of my own, but since we've got a caller with a question, let's head in that direction.

 

Caller 1:  Well, I guess it's a good thing I'm the only one right now because this is something I'd like to hear the Commissioner opine about. So I'm an Intelligence Analyst who studies fraud and scams for private companies. I actually used to work at InfoTek so this is kind of all in my wheelhouse. I want the Commissioner's personal opinion on scams and fraud relating to COVID-19 talking about that, I think, back to last week when we hear FedSoc had a discussion on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. And for listeners who don't know what that is, that's basically the publisher versus platform debate around social media and how they monitor content right now.

 

      For the Commissioner, given the pervasive nature of scams and fraud on major platforms, Facebook specifically, especially during the crisis, do you have a personal opinion on what role these platforms and the moderation should be playing in removing fraud and scam? And broadly, have the major platforms been working with the FTC in these spheres?

 

Hon. Noah Phillips:  So thank you for the question. Let me begin by sort of bracketing an issue, and that is Section 230. Because that's a Congressional determination about under what circumstances there can be tort liability for a variety of conduct. That's a call that Congress made in the Communications Decency Act and it's something that you see broad debate about. Like, right now on Capitol Hill. It isn't really about FTC authority.

 

      In terms of the responsibilities of platforms, look I think we want to be working with -- if people are aware that scams are happening -- I don't want to speak about the underlying enforcement conversations going on. If people are seeing trends or are aware of things, I'd like to hear about them. I'd like us to hear about them. If there is -- I want people to help get positive messages out in terms of how to avoid scams. That sort of thing.

 

      The circumstance under which a particular platform is liable is going to depend on what the operative law is. If you --

 

Caller 1:  -- Of course.

 

Hon. Noah Phillips:  Right. If you host a platform, is every representation made on your platform also attributable legally to you? The answer to that is no, right? But this is -- I think you raise a really important point, which is just as these tools allow for a lot of really important interaction that is positive, they also allow, like any communications mechanism, for the spreading of things like scams. And the cost to spreading a scam goes down, just as the cost with your family goes down. And that's a real difficult issue that I think we struggle with.

 

Caller 1:  Thank you so much, Commissioner, for your thoughts.

 

Dean Reuter:  Let's turn to our next caller.

 

Karl Herchenroeder:  Hi. This is Karl Herchenroeder with Communications Daily.

 

Hon. Noah Phillips:  Hey Karl, how are you?

 

Karl Herchenroeder:  Good. Thanks for being available today. Can you talk a little bit about why, with these scams and frauds, why warning letters are optimal? That seems to be the first action that the agency will take, rather than taking enforcement action right from the start?

 

Hon. Noah Phillips:  Sure.  The answer to that question is, efficiency. We can send warning letters out very quickly to a lot of people. And while there are some -- there's a range of bad guys, there's actually a fairly good response in terms of people removing claims that we find. So our experience is that, for very little cost, we can stop bad conduct and hopefully prevent people from being harmed. And that's a good use of resources. The second thing I'll note is, to the extent someone does not respond to a warning letter, for purposes later of litigation, that's a helpful fact to have. You were warned and you didn't stop the violative conduct.

 

      So I've seen people make comments like what you just did about, well, you should sue them. Sure, but I'd rather not use a federal lawsuit if I can just use a letter. Again, as I mentioned earlier in the call, we filed our first lawsuit just the other day. I would expect more to follow. We're not taking that off the table at all. But if we can stop a whole bunch of conduct at a much lower cost, I think that's the right way to do it.

 

Dean Reuter:  You mentioned, Commissioner Phillips, consumer fraud. Are these schemes targeting anyone in particular? The elderly? The most vulnerable? Can you say more about that?

 

Hon. Noah Phillips:  Absolutely. There are a lot of different scams and the scams are targeting a lot of different people. Unfortunately, no one is safe in a certain respect. One community that I worry about, personally, is people who are on assistance from the government, because there are a series of scams that are government impersonation.

 

      But the broad answer to the question is, I worry about the elderly. I worry about a lot of different people. I worry about people who are out of work and want to make money. We see a lot of business opportunity scams. You know, you can work from home and make X amount of money per week. So no one is safe. Lots of different people are being targeted in different ways. I hope that answers the question.

 

Dean Reuter:  It does. It does. Let's check in with another caller before I get to the rest of my questions.

 

Lean Nylen:  Hi Commissioner Phillips. This is Leah Nylen from Politico. How are you?

 

Hon. Noah Phillips:  Well, thanks.  How are you Leah?

 

Leah Nylen:  Good. So I saw that yesterday, you guys filed a complaint against a company called SafeCart. They're some kind of online payment processor. And you guys are alleging that they had facilitated some scams. That they did the payment processing for a bunch of scams. Can you talk a little bit about when you guys decide to bring a case against somebody for facilitating these types of scams? How do you decide when a company who is just sort of providing a service like that, either -- maybe like a website or a payment processing, when they should be liable for these sorts of scams?

 

Hon. Noah Phillips:  So thanks for the question Leah. Let me take on robocallers and the letters we sent out to voice-over-the-internet providers. Where companies knowingly, and substantially, are assisting, where they're involved intentionally in perpetrating fraud, there can be what I think you'd probably call secondary liability. And so what we're going to be looking to in any given case is where is the conduct originating? What is the role that the party at which we're looking is playing in that conduct?

 

Dean Reuter:  I want to take you back to something you said earlier, Commissioner Phillips, while we wait on the audience to see if they have more questions. And that's about the assertion of power during a crisis and whether or not we ever get back to the pre-crisis level of power in the government. I can imagine a contact tracing regime that's developed by the government, works well, is useful, and then gets rewound as COVID abates. But maybe gets re-implemented or rolled out, formally or informally, during an opioid crisis, or some other law enforcement crisis, or some other perceived crisis. Are there concerns in government about that? And how is that typically addressed at all?

 

Hon. Noah Phillips:  I think my view is that, that's a recurring theme across crises, across governments, across time. And no one should underestimate that tendency of government to strengthen itself in a crisis. And if you are in government, like I am, you always want to do your best to guard against that instinct. Government does exist to help address crises, broadly speaking. But you do want to think, when you seek power or arrogate power to yourself, how it's used under other circumstances and what are the costs of giving too much power to any part of the government. I think that's a conversation we always need to have. That's true no matter what the nature of the crisis, be it health related, or economic, or national security, what have you.

 

Dean Reuter:  Very good. We do have one caller question pending.

 

Trisha Paoletta:  It's Trisha Paoletta from Harris, Wiltshire, & Grannis. Thank you Mr. Commissioner for spending your time with us today. And my apologies if you did address this earlier because I was only able to jump on kind of halfway through. But to follow up on the social contact tracing apps that are being developed by various tech companies, has there been statements by the FTC about that data? I mean, to follow up on Dean's question, ideally, when we want that contact data, location data deleted if it's for a government purpose. Obviously we all know we've signed over our lives to these tech companies and they know where we go and with whom we visit.

 

      But in terms of that data being harnessed for a government program like COVID contact tracing and positive COVID results, has there been any statement by FTC? Or a position in terms of when that data has to be destroyed, who can have access, does it need to be a third-party controlled? Anyway, if you could spend a little more time on that. And again, if you already addressed that, my apologies.

 

Hon. Noah Phillips:  So not at all, I did not address that. We have not put out a public statement, at least that I've seen, with respect to that announcement. That's an issue about which I'm personally quite interested to learn.

 

      In terms of actions that companies take, let me say two things. The first is, we look at the actions that they take under our standard series of tests. So in the context of consumer protection where, broadly speaking, privacy falls, we're looking at whether the conduct is unfair or deceptive. The test for unfairness, which is a Congressional test, has to do with, among other things, is their substantial harm and what are the costs and benefits of the conduct.

 

      The additional thing that I would note is the Chairman's statement about being reasonable and flexible and taking into account good-faith efforts to provide needed goods and services to people in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion. To the extent companies are engaged in data collection, leaving aside some particular statutes, there isn't a generalized obligation, at least again this is something that Congress is talking about. There isn't a generalized obligation to delete data once it's been used. That's a practice that some companies engage in. It's a practice that a lot of companies don't.

 

      And just to be clear, I don't think that right now, our job should be imposing obligations that the law doesn't apply to companies. If they're making representations about how data are going to be used, and those representations are material, and they violate them, that's a different question.

 

Trisha Paoletta:  Thank you.

 

Dean Reuter:  We do have one more question pending.

 

Mary Ann McGrail:  Mary Ann McGrail, an attorney in D.C. Like the prior caller, I had to jump on late, so if you've already answered this question, I apologize. I don't see how the proposals for contact tracing, such as the one just out of the Chan School of Public Health at Harvard which are quite extensive, would not violate HIPPA.

 

Hon. Noah Phillips:  Thanks Marianne. I haven't studied the Harvard proposal and we don't enforce HIPPA, so I can't speak to that question.

 

Mary Ann McGrail:  That would be really something DOJ would concern itself with?

 

Hon. Noah Phillips:  HHS is the enforcer for HIPPA.

 

Mary Ann McGrail:  Thank you.

 

Hon. Noah Phillips:  Not a problem.

 

Dean Reuter:  This might be a comment, might be a question. But I heard you speak about regulatory relaxation during the crisis, which I think is happening across agencies, and you might even have mentioned that. One thing I haven't really heard about, before today which I'm excited about personally, is the idea of studying the effects of those relaxations. That is the government owning a power and not utilizing it during a crisis in the name of the crisis, relaxing the requirements. But then, afterwards, studying those requirements, I suppose, to learn whether or not they're necessary or how beneficial they are in the first place. I don't know if you want to expand on that or not, but I congratulate your efforts on that. Is that happening government wide? Or just the FTC?

 

Hon. Noah Phillips:  I don't know. But I think it's a trend that we ought to watch very carefully. The FTC's got a great tradition of doing work, in particular in the healthcare space, although not limited to it. Looking at the impact and bringing the best research we can find to the attention of state authorities in terms of their plan, either to expand or contract.

 

      In the context of contraction, there are a few instances over the last few months of states looking at, for instance, scope of work laws. What can nurses work on? Can they work without the supervision of a doctor? Or what level of supervision needs to happen? And in the main, we generally push for people to be able to work at least to the limits of what professional standards permit and their training permits. The idea being that more access to healthcare is best. So I think this is going to be a really interesting -- and to be clear, I'm describing a variety of little things that have happened, some of them bigger, across states where regulatory burdens were relaxed.

 

      I think studying that is critical because if we are raising the cost of access to healthcare too much, that's something we need to have a really serious conversation about.

 

Dean Reuter:  Well, Commissioner Phillips, it looks we've had our final question from the audience. We've got some time left. Let me give you a chance to express a final thought or wrap up before we adjourn our call.

 

Hon. Noah Phillips:  I'll close with how I opened, and that is just thanking you, Dean and The Federalist Society for hosting me today. Always glad to be involved in all of the great conversation that you help facilitate. So thank you very much.

 

Dean Reuter:  Well, of course, my thanks to you. We certainly enjoyed having you on. Appreciate your time. Stay safe. And to the audience, thanks as well for dialing in and for your thoughtful questions. A reminder to check your emails and check The Federalist Society's website for announcements about our next teleforum conference call. I know we've got one scheduled in an hour or two, so don't make yourself a stranger. But until that next call, we are adjourned. Thank you very much everyone.

 

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Dean Reuter:  Thank you for listening to this episode of Teleforum, a podcast of The Federalist Society’s practice groups. For more information about The Federalist Society, the practice groups, and to become a Federalist Society member, please visit our website at fedsoc.org.