[1] He served as a commissioner of the agency from 2014 through 2021, and was chairman from 2014 to 2017 under the Obama administration, directing the U.S. government's oversight and recall of everyday products that can cause injury or death.

[4] Kaye received national attention[5] in 2007 for his pro bono representation of Salifou Yankene, a 17-year-old refugee from the Ivory Coast, who escaped to the United States after years of being a forced child soldier for rebel troops engaged in an ethnic civic war.

Little by little, Elliot changed that.” In 2008, Kaye temporarily stepped away from private practice to work on voter protection in Ohio for the Obama campaign.

The agency engineered the regulation of blinds and other window coverings whose cords, because they could entangle children by the neck, led to more than a dozen deaths annually.

“There’s not a simple regulatory solution, it’s really more about using the influence of the office to bring people together to try to drive culture change at the youth level.”[4] In 2015 and 2016, the CPSC collected a total of $57.6 million in civil penalties[7] from manufacturers and retailers, far more than in any prior period in the agency's history.

The highest-profile case Kaye spearheaded as CPSC chairman was that of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phone, whose lithium-ion batteries from a specific supplier could overheat and catch fire.

Kaye served as CPSC Chairman until February 2017, when the Trump White House removed him and installed Ann Marie Buerkle in an acting capacity.