In the News

In a recent post for the Yale Journal on Regulation’s Notice and Comment blog, the regulatory policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity, Max Sarinsky, argued that administrative agencies should aim to preemptively rebut major questions doctrine challenges by citing previous agency actions. Sarinsky identified new Environmental Protection Agency vehicle pollution standards as an example.

In a forthcoming article in the Georgetown Environmental Law Review, Richard L. Revesz, the AnBryce Professor of Law at New York University Law School, and Max Sarinsky, regulatory policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity, propose that federal agencies preemptively address challenges under the major questions doctrine by drawing comparisons to prior agency actions.

Earlier this week, Max Sarinsky published an excellent piece about how agencies could get ahead of major questions doctrine (MQD) challenges to new rules... In the same spirit as Sarinsky’s blog post, we articulate another way to rebut MQD challenges to new agency actions. 

A Feb. 28 webinar -- hosted by the Center for Progressive Reform, Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, and Institute for Policy Integrity -- will discuss the White House’s new cost-benefit review guidance known as Circular A-4, how it can be used in comments and final rules, as well as how EPA’s updated social cost of carbon (SCC) valuations can affect pending regulations.

The Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, Center for Progressive Reform, and Institute for Policy Integrity are holding a Feb. 28 webinar exploring how the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs’ (OIRA) new Circular A-4 guidance can be used effectively in comments and included in final regulations.

If Chevron is undone, says Don Goodson, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) at New York University, that is “a big concern,” though it is unclear “how exactly that would play out because it would be such a big change, and so many cases upheld agency actions resting on Chevron.”

According to New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity, the Trump administration won only 23 percent of legal challenges to its agency actions (which were almost entirely deregulatory), compared to a success rate of about 70 percent defending agency actions in previous administrations. 

Environmentalists are warning that if the Supreme Court ends the long-standing Chevron doctrine, as is widely expected after Jan. 17 arguments, it will result in significant policy uncertainty as courts conduct heightened scrutiny of EPA and other agency rules while Congress is unable to provide detailed legislation that such an approach requires... Donald Goodson of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University tells Inside EPA that the high court should have dismissed Loper and just heard Relentless, which is “the obviously better vehicle” because all nine justices can participate.

As 2023 drew to a close, EPA sharply increased its estimates for what climate change costs society. A higher carbon value can help tip the scales in favor of a stronger regulatory option that delivers greater net benefits... “Agencies often leave a more stringent option on the table, even if their own analysis finds that it would yield greater net benefits,” said Max Sarinsky, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.

Donald Goodson of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University says the Chervon and APA cases, taken together, could have even more of an impact than in isolation. That is because if the Supreme Court overturns or narrows Chevron and then extends the statute of limitations under the APA, that could open up old rules to new challenges, creating massive uncertainty.