Published April 17, 2025
On April 11, 2025, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published a notice of request for information (RFI), soliciting “ideas for deregulation from across the country.” Written comments from the public can be submitted here until Monday, May 12, 2025.
OMB asks commenters to help inform deregulation efforts by identifying “any and all” regulations “currently in effect” that should be rescinded or replaced.
Specifically, OMB is looking for regulations that are “unnecessary, unlawful, unduly burdensome, or unsound” and that “stifle American businesses and American ingenuity.” As the RFI explains, “Americans are the most inventive, hardworking, and industrious people in the world,” but “[f]or too long,” “onerous and unnecessary regulations” have stunted “American dynamism and creativity.”
OMB is particularly interested in regulations:
- “that are inconsistent with statutory text or the Constitution,”
- “where costs exceed benefits,”
- “where the regulation is outdated or unnecessary,” or
- “where regulation is burdening American businesses in unforeseen ways.”
The RFI directs commenters to provide background of the regulation and “detailed reasons” for why it should be rescinded.
OMB’s RFI aligns with President Trump’s deregulation initiative and executive actions directing agencies to minimize regulatory burdens on the American public.
Trump’s “10-to-1 Deregulation Initiative”
On January 31, President Trump issued an executive order on “unleashing prosperity through deregulation.” As an accompanying White House fact sheet explained, “Overregulation stops American entrepreneurship, crushes small business, reduces consumer choice, discourages innovation, and infringes on the liberties of American citizens.”
The executive order directed federal agencies to identify at least ten existing regulations to eliminate for each new regulation it seeks to promulgate. (During Trump’s first term, it was two-to-one.)
“Regulation” or “rule” is defined broadly to mean “an agency statement of general or particular applicability and future effect designed to implement, interpret, or prescribe law or policy or to describe the procedure or practice requirements of an agency.” This includes “regulations, rules, memoranda, administrative orders, guidance documents, policy statements, and interagency agreements.” But it does not include regulations related to “a military, national security, homeland security, foreign affairs, or immigration-related function” or “agency organization, management, or personnel.”
Executive Order on Lawful Governance and Rescinding Regulations
Implementing the deregulation initiative, President Trump’s February 19 executive order sought to “ensure lawful governance” by “rescinding unlawful regulations and regulations that undermine the national interest.”
The order flagged seven “classes” of regulations, specifically those that:
- are unconstitutional or “raise serious constitutional difficulties,” like exceeding federal power;
- “are based on unlawful delegations of legislative power”;
- are not based on “the best reading of the underlying statutory authority or prohibition”;
- are “not authorized by clear statutory authority” and “implicate matters of social, political, or economic significance”;
- “impose significant costs upon private parties that are not outweighed by public benefits”;
- “harm the national interest by significantly and unjustifiably impeding technological innovation, infrastructure development, disaster response, inflation reduction, research and development, economic development, energy production, land use, and foreign policy objectives”; and
- “impose undue burdens on small business and impede private enterprise and entrepreneurship.”
Agencies are directed to identify regulations in the above classes and develop a plan to rescind or modify the regulations.
Presidential Memo on Repealing Unlawful Regulations
On April 9, President Trump issued a presidential memorandum implementing the February 19 executive order. The memo requires agencies to prioritize repealing regulations that are unlawful under ten recent Supreme Court decisions:
- Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024);
- West Virginia v. EPA, 597 U.S. 697 (2022);
- SEC v. Jarkesy, 603 U.S. 109 (2024);
- Michigan v. EPA, 576 U.S. 743 (2015);
- Sackett v. EPA, 598 U.S. 651 (2023);
- Ohio v. EPA, 603 U.S. 279 (2024);
- Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, 594 U.S. 139 (2021);
- Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181 (2023);
- Carson v. Makin, 596 U.S. 767 (2022); and
- Roman Cath. Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, 592 U.S. 14 (2020).
An accompanying White House Fact Sheet provides more detail about the controlling legal principles and authorities in these “watershed” cases. These include the demise of the Chevron doctrine, the Major Questions Doctrine, cost-benefit analysis under the Administrative Procedure Act, the Seventh Amendment, the Takings Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, the Free Exercise Clause, and “equal treatment of religious institutions vis-à-vis secular institutions.”
The memo contemplates that “facially unlawful regulations” can be “immediately” repealed without advance notice and comment consistent with the “good cause” exception in the Administrative Procedure Act, which does not require notice-and-comment rulemaking when it would be “impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.” Retaining and enforcing such regulations “is clearly contrary to the public interest,” and notice and comment is “‘unnecessary’ where repeal is required as a matter of law to ensure consistency with a ruling of the United States Supreme Court.”
Rachel N. Morrison is a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where she directs EPPC’s Administrative State Accountability Project. An attorney, her legal and policy work focuses on religious liberty, health care rights of conscience, the right to life, nondiscrimination, and civil rights.
