I think it's just you. The first paragraph is clear to me. There is a law that allows workers to sue employers. There's a group trying to repeal it. Presuma

I think it's just you. The first paragraph is clear to me. There is a law that allows workers to sue employers. There's a group trying to repeal it. Presumably repeal benefits businesses at the expense of workers. A political compromise has stopped the repeal efforts. To this native speaker, "headed off" is a perfectly cromulent term: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=headed+off https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=headed+off Even if it's not something you might hear in everyday speech, I'd say it's commonly used in political journalism. The article itself is written well enough, provides enough background and context to give you a general idea of what's happening without editorializing. In other words, it's decent journalism.