Sheriff of Nottingham, um, Secretary of State Bill Galvin, has the right to make sure Robinhood isn't stealing from the poor, court rules

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that Secretary of State Bill Galvin did nothing wrong in accusing online investment firm Robinhood of giving bad investment advice to the online poor to enrich itself.

The state's highest court rejected Robinhood's quiver of arguments that Galvin had no right, under either state law or common law - those legal standards that have become common without legislation, sometimes dating back to Nottingham Woods days - to impose standards that require newfangled investment firms that combine both securities sales and investment advice to adopt practices aimed at protecting investors. Galvin's office oversees security sales in Massachusetts.

This case concerns the question whether, by promulgating the fiduciary duty rule, the Secretary overstepped the bounds of the authority granted to him under [state investment law]. We conclude that he did not. We further conclude that the fiduciary duty rule does not override the common-law protections available to investors, that [the law] is not an impermissible delegation of legislative power, and that the rule is not preempted by the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) determination to impose a national "best interest" standard of care on broker-dealers.

Also, the court suggested Robinhood's lawyers be more careful when reading a dictionary:

Robinhood mistakenly asserts that the Secretary's definition of "unethical or dishonest conduct or practices" to include the failure to abide by the fiduciary duty rule is inconsistent with the dictionary definitions of those terms. See Black's Law Dictionary 790 (4th rev. ed. 1968) (defining "fraudulent or dishonest act" as one that "involves bad faith, a breach of honesty, a want of integrity, or moral turpitude"); id. at 1698 (defining "unethical" as "not according to business or professional standards").