Covington & Burling LLP

Federal legislation to “pause” state artificial intelligence regulations will not become law—for now—after the Senate stripped the measure from the budget reconciliation package, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1).

The Senate voted 99–1 to strike the moratorium language from the bill during a marathon 27-hour “vote-a-rama” on July 1. The Senate voted 51–50,

On June 17, the Joint California Policy Working Group on AI Frontier Models (“Working Group”) issued its final report on frontier AI policy, following public feedback on the draft version of the report released in March.  The report describes “frontier models” as the “most capable” subset of foundation models, or a class of general-purpose technologies

In a surprise move, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled that a proposed moratorium on state and local AI laws satisfies the Byrd Rule, the requirement that reconciliation bills contain only budgetary provisions and omit “extraneous” policy language.  While MacDonough’s determination allows the Senate Commerce Committee’s version of the moratorium to remain in the bill, its