The Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) Division of Corporation Finance announced on Aug. 14, 2026, that it will permanently stop responding to no-action requests under Rule 14a-8. The rule governs when shareholders may place proposals on a company's proxy ballot and when companies may exclude them.
No-action letters were nonbinding responses in which SEC staff indicated whether it would object if a company omitted a shareholder proposal from its ballot. The change makes permanent a pause the division first announced Nov. 17, 2025, which had applied only to the 2025-26 proxy season (Oct. 1, 2025-Sept. 30, 2026).
The new policy also goes further than the temporary one. The division will now decline all no-action requests, including exclusion requests under Rule 14a-8(i)(1), a narrow category it had continued to review during the pause. It will also stop sending no-objection letters in response to companies' Rule 14a-8(j) exclusion notices.
