Legal Challenge to Trump’s “2-for-1” Reducing Regulation Executive Order

CLA volunteer attorney Katherine Meyer (Meyer Glitzenstein & Eubanks LLP) helped a group of law professors from around the country, who are also Member Scholars of the Center for Progressive Reform, file an amicus curiae brief on Wednesday, May 24 in a case challenging President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 13771 on “Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs.” An amicus brief is filed by a person with a strong interest on the subject matter of a legal action, but is not a party to the action. The Court granted the motion to file the brief that same day.

The executive order requires federal agencies to eliminate two regulations for every one they create. The plaintiffs (Natural Resource Defense Council, Public Citizen, EarthJustice, and Communications Workers of America) argue that the executive order violates the Administrative Procedure Act—the law from which federal agencies derive their rulemaking authority—and exceeds the President’s authority under the Constitution.

The amicus brief supports the Plaintiffs’ arguments and advises the court on fundamental principles of administrative law and policy, including the paramount importance of considering regulatory benefits in any cost-benefit analysis of a proposed new regulation. The law professors argue that the, “Executive Order ignores regulatory benefits and therefore fails to distinguish between effective and ineffective regulations.”

You can read the amicus brief by clicking document below: