Right now, in courts and regulatory proceedings across the country, the rules governing who can invest, how far the SEC can reach, and what rights you keep are being rewritten.
ICAN is challenging wealth-based barriers that restrict access to private markets for as many as 200+ million Americans.
ICAN is helping establish constitutional limits on SEC enforcement authority, including ongoing litigation before the United States Supreme Court.
ICAN helped end the SEC's fifty-three-year-old "gag rule," which barred settling defendants from publicly disputing the agency's allegations.
ICAN is challenging how the SEC applies an eighty-year-old legal test to emerging technologies, calling for clear rules instead of enforcement actions.
Through strategic litigation, Supreme Court advocacy, regulatory engagement, and direct legal representation, ICAN works to ensure that markets remain fair, transparent, and accountable.
Investor Choice Advocates Network's initiatives span some of the most important legal and policy debates in modern capital markets. We seek to establish precedents that extend far beyond individual cases — shaping investor access, regulatory accountability, and the integrity of American markets.
Three fights ICAN is waging right now to establish lasting market reform
For thirty years, Ray Lucia built an unblemished career as a financial adviser and broadcaster. The SEC pursued him through its own in-house court — no jury, no neutral judge. He took his case to the Supreme Court and won, 7–2, in 2018, proving the agency's judges were unconstitutional.
Thirteen years later, with no investor ever harmed and his savings gone, he remains under a lifetime bar keeping him out of the industry he has worked in his entire life. Your support is how that fight gets funded.
For fifty-three years, defendants who settled with the SEC were barred from publicly denying its allegations. The SEC could tell its story. Defendants could not tell theirs.
Roughly 98% of SEC defendants settle rather than go to trial — often not because they admit wrongdoing, but because fighting the federal government can be financially devastating.
Four years ago, ICAN filed a Supreme Court brief — joined by Mark Cuban and Elon Musk — urging the Court to end the gag rule. On May 18, 2026, the SEC itself ended that overreach, calling the policy what it was: a condition imposed on a fundamental American freedom — the right to criticize the government.
Earlier this year, in Sripetch v. SEC, ICAN urged the United States Supreme Court to hold that disgorgement — essentially financial judgments above and beyond monetary penalties — requires identifiable victims, actual harm, and causation.
Without those limits, disgorgement becomes a form of double punishment, escaping constitutional safeguards.
The Court did not go that far — but Justice Thomas cited ICAN's brief by name and wrote that taking money this way may require a jury. And the Court deliberately left open the precise question ICAN's own clients present: whether the SEC can seek disgorgement where no investor's legal rights have been interfered with.
Never accused of wrongdoing or violation of any law whatsoever, she was ordered to disgorge $44,159 — then billed another $8,826 in "prejudgement interest" for the time she spent defending herself.
ICAN called it a due process tax — and challenged it. Two business days after ICAN filed, the court denied the SEC's demand, opening the door to challenge the $44,159 itself. With your help, we hope to take Jamie's case to the Supreme Court.
To qualify as an accredited investor, individuals must earn more than $200,000 a year or hold a net worth above $1 million — a test that excludes more than 200 million Americans from many private opportunities.
Emily holds a master's degree in applied economics and runs operations for a healthcare company — yet was barred from investing in Healthcare Shares, a fund focused on an industry she understands better than most, because her net worth falls just short of a line drawn more than forty years ago.
ICAN is representing Emily and Healthcare Shares in a federal lawsuit challenging the SEC's accredited investor rule — arguing qualified individuals should not be excluded because they fail to meet a government-imposed wealth test.
ICAN represents the defendants in SEC v. Barry, a case testing how far the SEC can stretch the Supreme Court's eighty-year-old Howey "security" test.
With the appeals courts split, ICAN is taking the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court — demanding one clear national rule instead of SEC regulation by enforcement.
One well-chosen case can rewrite the rules for thousands of investors.
We don't just take cases. We pick the fights that establish precedent and create lasting reform.
Fund the Next FightRecent accomplishments include:
After years of advocacy — including ICAN's Supreme Court amicus work in Powell v. SEC — the SEC rescinded Rule 202.5(e) and announced it will no longer enforce the no-deny provisions that barred settling defendants from disputing its allegations.
ICAN is fighting the SEC's attempt to enforce a constitutionally tainted order against a retiree in Texas — pursuing roughly $450,000 in penalties and garnishing his Social Security.
ICAN filed two amicus briefs in Sripetch v. SEC, arguing disgorgement must be tied to identifiable victims, actual harm, and causation. In its June 4, 2026 decision, the Supreme Court declined to adopt that limit — but Justice Thomas cited ICAN's brief by name, and the Court left open the very question ICAN's clients present, clearing a path for the next case.
In ICAN's landmark SEC v. Punch TV victory, it defended entrepreneur Joseph Collins against a $1.35 million SEC disgorgement demand over a self-reported technical issue. ICAN prevailed, and Collins kept his business.
Ray Lucia's 2018 Supreme Court victory exposed the unconstitutional structure of the SEC's in-house courts. Thirteen years later he remains under a lifetime bar. In 2025, ICAN filed a motion to lift it.
An SEC approval order cited ICAN's comment letter as part of the rationale for eliminating FINRA's $25,000 pattern-day-trading account balance minimum requirement, helping expand market access for millions of investors.
In SEC v. PulseChain, ICAN's brief on behalf of users of a blockchain protocol defeated the SEC's attempt to name self-executing software code itself as a defendant — a key check on the agency's effort to regulate new technologies by enforcement instead of clear rules.
Your dollar doesn't fund one case — it funds the precedent that case sets for thousands. That's why ICAN backs only high-impact fights, and why roughly twenty law firms now donate their expertise to the cause. Fair markets don't defend themselves — ICAN's donors do, and you can stand with them today.
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