Policy Impacts

Successfully Challenging (and Tracking) Harmful Deregulation

The Institute for Policy Integrity has filed more than 80 amicus briefs in federal and state courts, including influential amicus briefs in many critical environmental lawsuits related to the first Trump Administration’s harmful deregulatory efforts. In particular, Policy Integrity has been at the forefront of efforts to push federal agencies to acknowledge and address the environmental and public-health harms of regulatory rollbacks. This push led to court rulings confirming that agencies are not authorized to ignore or minimize the harm of deregulatory actions.

In a ruling that echoed the arguments from Policy Integrity’s brief and cited our academic article, a federal court struck down the repeal of the Interior Department’s Valuation Rule, which sought to ensure that states and the federal government receive the full value of royalties due for resources extracted from public lands. Federal courts have also relied on Policy Integrity’s briefs in litigation challenging harmful agency actions over Title X funding, fossil-fuel leasing, and in numerous other cases.

Policy Integrity launched a resource that tracked the outcomes of legal challenges to policy changes in the first Trump Administration, revealing that the administration prevailed in less than 22 percent of these cases. The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, L.A. Times, Brookings, and Harper’s Magazine have cited the resource. Our newer resource tracks litigation outcomes for all major federal rules since 1996, revealing several insights to help guide regulatory policy. This newer resource has been cited in the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and Politico.

Policy Integrity has continued to oppose deregulatory efforts that are harmful or unlawful. For instance, when the second Trump Administration directed the rescission of Circular A-4, the primary federal guidance on regulatory analysis, and ordered it to be replaced with the 2003 version, Policy Integrity published a report explaining why this action was unlawful and agency actions relying on the 2003 version would likely be arbitrary and capricious. Policy Integrity also continues to author reports highlighting similar harmful deregulatory actions and amicus briefs in litigation on harmful deregulatory efforts. We have launched a webpage collecting these and other resources on recent federal actions.