Order of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Relating to the Continuation, Shutdown, and Resumption of Certain Commission Operations in the Event of a Lapse in Appropriations

<RULE> COMMODITY FUTURES TRADING COMMISSION <CFR>17 CFR Chapter I</CFR> <SUBJECT>Order of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Relating to the Continuation, Shutdown, and Resumption of Certain Commission Operations in the Event of a Lapse in Appropriations</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Commodity Futures Trading Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notification of order; final order. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This order is being issued to provide for the continuation, shutdown, and resumption of certain operations of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the “Commission”) in the event of a lapse in appropriations, and to alert all persons regulated by or engaged in proceedings at the Commission of these provisions. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This notification and order is applicable on September 30, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For market oversight matters contact Rahul Varma, Acting Director, Division of Market Oversight (DMO), at 202-418-5353 or <E T="03">rvarma@cftc.gov.</E> For clearing matters, contact Richard Haynes, Acting Director, Division of Clearing and Risk (DCR), at 202-418-5063 or <E T="03">rhaynes@cftc.gov.</E> For matters involving intermediaries, contact Thomas Smith, Acting Director, Market Participants Division (MPD), at 202-418-5495 or <E T="03">tsmith@cftc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> As of 12:01 a.m. on October 1, 2025, the funding of many federal government activities is set to expire. Unless appropriations are enacted for Fiscal Year 2026, federal departments and agencies whose continued operations are dependent upon such funding—including the Commission—will be required to execute contingency plans for this lapse in appropriations (commonly referred to as a “shutdown”). Under 31 U.S.C. 1341 (the “Antideficiency Act”), the Commission is prohibited from expending or obligating any funds in the absence of appropriations, subject to a narrow set of exceptions. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The Commission may use one of the exceptions to the Antideficiency Act set forth in 31 U.S.C. 1342, which permits agencies to obligate funds before an appropriations measure has been enacted and to accept voluntary services during a lapse when certain employees are needed to perform emergency or “excepted” functions. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  The Antideficiency Act provides that an officer or employee of the United States may not make or authorize an expenditure or obligation exceeding an amount in an appropriation or fund for the expenditure or obligation; involve the government in a contract or obligation for the payment of money before an appropriation is made unless authorized by law; make or authorize an expenditure or obligation of funds required to be sequestered under section 252 of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985; or involve the government in a contract or obligation for the payment of money required to be sequestered under section 252 of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  Section 1342 of Title 31 of the U.S. code provides that an officer or employee of the United States Government may not accept voluntary services for the government or employ personal services exceeding that authorized by law except for emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property. As used in this section, the term “emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property” does not include ongoing, regular functions of government the suspension of which would not imminently threaten the safety of human life or the protection of property. </FTNT> The Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel has determined that government work performed so that the commodities and futures markets can continue to operate and so that trading may continue qualifies as an “excepted” function as set forth in 31 U.S.C. 1342. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> Consequently, in the event of a lapse in appropriations, the Commission may incur obligations to allow certain employees who perform “excepted” functions to continue to perform those functions. This authority, however, does not permit the Commission to fund ongoing, regular functions, the suspension of which would not imminently threaten the safety of human life or the protection of property during a lapse in appropriations. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> Thus, the Commission has designated certain essential personnel to fulfill its obligation to protect property. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  OLC Memorandum for the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, <E T="03">Government Operations in the Event of a Lapse in Appropriations,</E> OLC Opinion, at 2-3 (Aug. 16, 1995). Specifically, the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel has opined that: “In the absence of government supervision, the stock markets, commodities and futures exchanges would be unable to operate . . . these actions and the others required as part of a true shut down of the federal government would impose significant health and safety risks on millions of Americans, some of which would undoubtedly result in the loss of human life, and they would immediately result in massive dislocations of and losses to the private economy, as well as disruptions of many aspects of society and of private activity generally, producing incalculable amounts of suffering and loss.” <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> at 1 (citing 31 U.S.C. 1342). </FTNT> In addition, certain employees of the Commission's Whistleblower Office (WBO) will continue to work because they have an alternative funding source. The Commission's regulations, found in title 17 of the Code of Federal Regulations, place a number of filing obligations on registered entities, intermediaries, market participants and the public within specified time frames, establish Commission authority to stay certain actions by designated and registered entities, and also include provisions relating to requests for Commission approval and issuance of exemption and interpretative relief and guidance with specific time frames for Commission action. The Commission has reviewed its statute and regulations in light of its obligation to protect the safety of human life or the protection of property to determine which Commission operations will continue during a lapse in appropriations. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Tolling and Extension of Certain Procedural Time Limits Applicable to the Commission</HD> In the event of a lapse in appropriations, the Commission will not be processing or reviewing filings for Commission discretionary or mandatory approval or any other actions that are not directly related to the safety of human life or the protection of property. Matters not directly related to the protection of property include rule, rule amendment, and contract certifications filed with the Commission, rule amendments and contracts voluntarily submitted for Commission approval or review; requests for contract market designation, swap execution facility, swap data repository, derivatives clearing organization, and foreign board of trade registration; and other requests for Commission approval or other action. The above-mentioned matters do not include any emergency notifications that may be required by Commission regulations of designated or registered entities and intermediaries, or that are required by any rule of a registered entity that has been approved by or self-certified to the Commission. This includes emergency rules certified pursuant to regulation 40.6(a)(6) and (7) and emergency changes certified by a systemically important derivatives clearing organization pursuant to regulation 40.10(h). More specifically, matters not directly related to the protection of property include filings under judicially reinstated regulations 1.47 and 1.48 (bona fide hedge requests), part 30 (regulation 30.10 petitions for exemption and regulation 30.13 requests for certification), part 37 (swap execution facilities applications, demonstrations of compliance with core principles), part 38 (designated contract market applications, certifications of continued compliance in situations of merger or sale, and demonstrations of compliance with the core principles), part 39 (derivatives clearing organization applications, Commission review of swaps for determinations on clearing requirement, requests for orders regarding competition, and demonstrations of compliance with the core principles), part 40 (rule and contract filings-certifications and approvals and requests for confidential treatment of submissions, stays of certifications pursuant to regulation 40.12, determinations related to making swaps available to trade), part 41 (filing of notice-designated contract markets trading security futures products), part 48 (foreign board of trade registrations, adjudication of additional contracts for trading), and part 49 (swap data repository applications, registration of successor entities). Matters not directly related to the protection of property additionally include requests pursuant to regulations 145.7 and 145.9 (requests for Commission records, petitions for confidential treatment of information submitted to the Commission, and appeals of FOIA decisions), regulation 140.99 filings (requests for exemptive, no-action and interpretive letters), and certain matters pursuant to part 165 (payments related to whistleblower awards). For the foregoing matters that are currently pending before the Commission pursuant to any of these provisions, all applicable time deadlines for Commission action will be tolled until the Commission is able to resume full operations. For ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 29k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━