White House Tells Agencies to Scour Regs for Violations of Recent SCOTUS Admin Law Rulings
In an April 9 memorandum, President Donald Trump instructed all "executive departments and agencies" to "identify certain categories of unlawful and potentially unlawful regulations within 60 days" and establish plans to repeal them. The memo told the agencies to review their regulations for compliance with 10 recent Supreme Court decisions, the first of which is Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the decision eliminating the concept of deferring to agencies' interpretations of ambiguous statutes.
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Next on the list of SCOTUS decisions to consider is West Virginia v. EPA, which embraced the "major questions" doctrine. This legal theory stipulates that the federal government can regulate on major economic or political topics only upon explicit delegation from Congress. Also on the list is Michigan v. EPA, which instructed federal agencies to engage in "reasoned decisionmaking."
The memo said federal agencies "shall finalize rules without notice and comment, where doing so is" in line with the Administrative Procedure Act's "good cause" exception. This exception in the APA says agencies can do away with notice-and-comment rulemaking when engaging in this process would be "impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest." The memo said keeping and enforcing "facially unlawful regulations is clearly contrary to the public interest," adding that notice-and-comment periods aren't needed "where repeal is required as a matter of law to ensure consistency with a ruling of the United States Supreme Court."
The memo said agencies thus have "ample cause and the legal authority to immediately repeal unlawful regulations."