On January 10, 2014, the SEC posted new Form SD on its website. Form SD is an Exchange Act form to be used to satisfy disclosure requirements implemented under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act relating to conflict minerals contained in products that public companies manufacture or contract to be manufactured and that are necessary to the functionality of those products or their production processes.

Under the conflict minerals rule, all affected companies, regardless of their fiscal year, must make conflict minerals disclosure on Form SD for the first time by May 31, 2014. Because that date falls on a Saturday in 2014, the filing deadline is extended to June 2, 2014 under Exchange Act Rule 0-3(a). This disclosure must cover calendar year 2013. Affected companies must make conflict minerals disclosure on Form SD by May 31 of each year thereafter, covering the most recently-completed calendar year. For more information on complying with the disclosure requirements of the conflict minerals rule, see Conflict Minerals Rule Compliance Toolkit.

To date, Form SD had only been released within the adopting releases for the conflict minerals rule and the resource extraction payment rule. Originally, Form SD was also supposed to be used to disclose information about payments to US and foreign governments made by public companies engaged in the commercial development of oil, gas or minerals (resource extraction). Resource extraction issuers were to begin filing Form SD for fiscal years ending after September 30, 2012. However, on July 2, 2013, the US District Court for the District of Columbia vacated the resource extraction rule and remanded it back to the SEC for further proceedings (see Legal Update, SEC's Resource Extraction Rule Vacated and Remanded). Unless and until the issues around the resource extraction rule are resolved, resource extraction issuers do not have any disclosure requirements on Form SD.

The conflict minerals rule is currently subject to legal challenge in the District of Columbia federal court. On July 23, 2013, the US District Court for the District of Columbia upheld the validity of the rule, but in August the business group plaintiffs appealed the judgment. Oral argument was heard on January 7, 2014. For more information on the conflict mineral litigation, see Practice Note, Conflict Minerals Rule Challenge: Litigation Tracker.