Recent Projects

Last year, the Trump administration finalized its Title X “gag rule,” which prohibits funded family planning service providers from referring clients for abortion and requires Title X facilities to be physically separate from facilities that provide abortion. We’ve filed two briefs in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in the ongoing challenge of the rule.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has proposed to repeal and replace the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, which sought to improve the process by which state and local governments that receive HUD funding identify and mitigate impediments to fair housing in their communities. We submitted comments detailing deficiencies in the Department’s regulatory impact analysis for the proposal. Specifically, we explain how HUD (1) ignores benefits of the 2015 rule that will be forgone under the proposed replacement, and (2) overestimates cost savings that will result from the proposed replacement.

In August, the Department of Homeland Security finalized the “public charge” rule, which seeks to deny lawful permanent residency to immigrants who have participated in public assistance programs like Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the Section 8 housing voucher program. Multiple federal district courts have since enjoined the rule from taking effect and Policy Integrity filed amicus briefs supporting those injunctions on appeal. Our briefs explain how the Department failed to meaningfully assess many of the substantial social costs of the large-scale disenrollment from public assistance programs that will result from the rule, and also failed to identify any significant social benefits from the rule.

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) proposed revisions to eligibility for its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. We submitted comments focusing on serious flaws in the agency’s analysis of the rule’s impacts.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently finalized a rule that expands protections for healthcare workers who deny care based on moral or religious beliefs. We submitted amicus briefs in support of challenges to the rule filed by states, municipalities, medical organizations, and civil-rights advocates. Our argument details how HHS’s analysis of the rule’s economic impacts ignores significant costs while touting entirely speculative benefits. We submitted briefs to the Southern District of New York, Northern District of California, and the District of Maryland.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently proposed a rule that would narrow the scope of civil rights protections for patients under the Affordable Care Act. We submitted comments that focus on serious flaws in HHS’s regulatory impact analysis for the proposal, which ignores potentially substantial costs to patients and makes unsupported claims regarding the proposal’s benefits.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently proposed a rule that would substantially expand DHS’s ability to deny applications for lawful permanent residency by deeming immigrants likely to become “public charges.” We submitted comments critiquing the cost-benefit analysis accompanying DHS’s proposal.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently issued a proposed rule that would revise implementing regulations for Title X of the Public Health Service Act (Title X), the country’s only publicly funded family planning, serving millions of women annually. Though the grant program is already bound by the legal limits on directly using federal grants to fund abortion services, the proposed rule now seeks to encumber entities that provide both Title X-eligible programs and abortion-related services with additional restrictions. Our comments focus on serious errors and oversights in the Department’s analysis of the Proposed Rule’s costs and benefits. First, HHS misstates and misapplies the standard for conducting a regulatory impact analysis under Executive Order 12,866. Second, HHS ignores the Proposed Rule’s potentially substantial indirect costs—most notably, the health consequences stemming from patients’ reduced access to healthcare services. Third, HHS fails to assess the distributional impacts of the Proposed Rule.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently suspended a rule to increase the availability of affordable housing in higher-rent neighborhoods. Our amicus brief in a suit against HUD argues that the suspension violates administrative law by disregarding economic impacts and failing to first seek public feedback.