In the News

The defense of the Federal Acquisition Regulatory (FAR) Council’s pending rule comes as another analyst recently argued that agencies should use EPA’s recently finalized vehicle emissions rule as a model for how to counter such major questions attacks, including by citing statutory mandates for the rule and drawing analogies with past agency practice. “Other agencies should study EPA’s approach and follow suit,” argued Max Sarinsky, the regulatory policy director at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI), last month.

“EPA’s thorough analysis also offers a critical roadmap for Department of Justice litigators who will soon brief this issue. Other agencies should study EPA’s approach and follow suit,” argues Max Sarinsky, the regulatory policy director at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity, in a March 25 blog post. He adds: “EPA details how its new rule is consistent with decades of agency practice and legislative purpose,” his blog post says, adding that the agency explained how the Clean Air Act text, legislative history and past rules are all consistent with considering and promoting electric vehicles.

In the nearly two years since the Supreme Court upended administrative law with its formal introduction of the MQD in West Virginia, federal agencies, scholars, and advocates have been coming up with ways to shore up new regulations against potentially-heightened scrutiny. Often these recommendations come in the form of particular analyses that an agency could include in a regulatory preamble that rebuts claims that a regulation is novel, transformative, economically significant, or any of the Court’s other supposed markers of “majorness.” For example, alongside the Institute for Policy Integrity, our organization urged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to include a detailed accounting of “regulatory antecedents” in its final clean car rule to help rebut claims that it was a “novel” or “unheralded” agency action; as Max Sarinsky recently detailed, the EPA thoroughly did so in its final regulation.

The American Public Health Association, Smart Surfaces Coalition, Institute for Policy Integrity, and others can support a broader social cost benefit to determine what performance levels to require in procurement standards.

“EPA’s thorough analysis also offers a critical roadmap for Department of Justice litigators who will soon brief this issue. Other agencies should study EPA’s approach and follow suit,” argues Max Sarinsky, the regulatory policy director at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI), in a March 25 blog post on the Yale Journal on Regulation.

“EPA’s thorough analysis also offers a critical roadmap for Department of Justice litigators who will soon brief this issue. Other agencies should study EPA’s approach and follow suit,” argues Max Sarinsky, the regulatory policy director at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI), in a March 25 blog post on the Yale Journal on Regulation. ... “Far from being transformative or extraordinary, the SEC’s . . . rule is a run-of-the-mill use of the SEC’s authority with ample precedent,” argues IPI legal fellow Bridget Pals, in a July 2022 Medium article about the then-proposed version of the measure.

Max Sarinsky, senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity, said both the EPA’s $190 figure and the $51 interim figure from the interagency working group were developed through a rigorous process, so other agencies should be able to use either number without worrying about their trustworthiness. The EPA’s numbers are “the better choice moving forward,” Sarinsky said, because they draw on newer evidence than the working group’s.

No amount of hoarded wealth will save corporations from facing the disastrous consequences of climate change. The same is true for state legislators. New Yorkers have nothing to fear from the Climate Change Superfund Act. According to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU Law, these fees would not increase consumer gas prices. This is due to the fact that they are a fixed cost, rather than a current variable cost of production. Market forces of supply and demand discourage cost increase, which would lead consumers to bring their business elsewhere.

The Institute for Policy Integrity issued a letter in support of the rule proposal in June 2022 in response to criticism that they SEC rules are overrreaching. “Throughout its history, the SEC has repeatedly required disclosure of information that, while not financial on its face, is nevertheless relevant to investors’ assessment of a registrant’s future financial prospects,” the letter said.

Roughly 1,800 regulators and other energy professionals gathered for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ Winter Policy Summit last week where state and federal regulators had a lot to say about the clean energy transition, grid reliability and new EPA rules. On a panel with state public utility commissioners, EPA’s Air Office lead, Joseph Goffman, discussed how to navigate greenhouse gas pollution-reduction rules while maintaining adequate energy resources during the energy transition. He also listened to their concerns about the transition’s pace and scope.