Prof. Kristin Hickman Interviewed by Bloomberg Law About the Administration’s Plan to Eliminate Numerous Agency Regulations

Professor Kristin Hickman, associate dean for research & intellectual life, was interviewed by Bloomberg Law about a Trump administration plan to fast-track a wholesale elimination of regulations that rely on the courts to accept its expansive view of when agencies can skip laborious procedures normally necessary to rescind — as well as create — rules. Agencies were directed to review their existing regulations against 10 US Supreme Court decisions from the last decade that “recognize appropriate constitutional boundaries on the power of unelected bureaucrats and that restore checks on unlawful agency actions.” Agencies are directed to eliminate regulations that are unlawful based on those rulings. The White House’s argument — that agencies finding rules unlawful provides the good cause needed under the Administrative Procedure Act to skip notice-and-comment rulemaking requirements — would go beyond what courts have allowed, administrative law professors and former agency lawyers said. Prof. Hickman said, “You’re talking about gutting the Administrative Procedure Act. Irrespective of what the president intends, I don’t see courts going along with that approach to the good cause exception.”