The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Monday ruled the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) can keep its revised regulations on how stock market data is collected, consolidated, and disseminated.

In 2020 the SEC introduced the new Market Data Infrastructure Rule. The rule “modernize[d] the national market system for the collection, consolidation, and dissemination of information with respect to quotations for and transactions in national market system (‘NMS’) stocks (‘NMS information’).” 

Petitioners NASDAQ Stock Market LLC challenged the new rule by alleging it was “arbitrary and capricious and contrary to the goals and policies of the Securities Exchange Act.”

However the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit found that the regulation fit within the SEC’s Congressional mandate. The court said that the rule “clearly represents a reasonable balancing of the objectives Congress directed the Commission to address in a complex and technical area based on the record before the Commission.”