On September 16, Judge Paul L. Friedman of the US District Court for the District of Columbia denied a challenge to the extraterritorial application of certain Commodity Futures Trading Commission rules promulgated under Title VII of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Title VII Rules), and the CFTC’s Interpretive Guidance and Policy Statement Regarding Compliance with Certain Swap Regulations (Cross-Border Guidance), in which the CFTC articulated its intentions regarding the extraterritorial application of the Title VII Rules. The complaint filed by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, International Swaps and Derivatives Association, and Institute of International bankers (collectively, Plaintiffs) alleged, inter alia, that the CFTC violated the notice-and-comment requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and the cost-benefit analysis requirements of the Commodity Exchange Act in promulgating the Title VII Rules and the Cross-Border Guidance. Plaintiffs sought a declaratory judgment that the Title VII Rules and Cross-Border Guidance were procedurally and substantively infirm, and requested that the court vacate the Cross-Border Guidance and Title VII Rules to the extent of their extraterritorial application.The District Court accepted the CFTC’s view that nothing in the Cross-Border Guidance created new obligations or made substantive changes to existing law. The District Court characterized the Cross-Border Guidance as a non-binding policy statement and interpretive rule that was not, in the absence of CFTC action to enforce the Cross-Border Guidance, “final agency action” subject to review under the APA. The District Court also held that the Plaintiffs did not have standing to challenge the CFTC’s “made available to trade” (MAT) rules, which require that swaps that are MAT be traded only on a CFTC-registered swap execution facility (SEF) or designated contract market because the Plaintiffs failed to demonstrate how the MAT rules harm any members of their organizations that might otherwise have standing to challenge the CFTC directly.