Directing the Repeal of Unlawful Regulations

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

SUBJECT: DIRECTING THE REPEAL OF UNLAWFUL REGULATIONS

Promoting economic growth and American innovation are top priorities of this Administration. Unlawful, unnecessary, and onerous regulations impede these objectives and impose massive costs on American consumers and American businesses. In recent years, the Supreme Court has issued a series of decisions that recognize appropriate constitutional boundaries on the power of unelected bureaucrats and that restore checks on unlawful agency actions. Yet, despite these critical course corrections, unlawful regulations — often promulgated in reliance on now-superseded Supreme Court decisions — remain on the books.

Consistent with these priorities and with my commitment to restore fidelity to the Constitution, on February 19, 2025, I issued Executive Order 14219 (Ensuring Lawful Governance and Implementing the President’s “Department of Government Efficiency” Deregulatory Initiative). It directed the heads of all executive departments and agencies to identify certain categories of unlawful and potentially unlawful regulations within 60 days and begin plans to repeal them. This review-and-repeal effort shall prioritize, in particular, evaluating each existing regulation’s lawfulness under the following United States Supreme Court decisions:

1. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024);
2. West Virginia v. EPA, 597 U.S. 697 (2022);
3. SEC v. Jarkesy, 603 U.S. 109 (2024);
4. Michigan v. EPA, 576 U.S. 743 (2015);
5. Sackett v. EPA, 598 U.S. 651 (2023);
6. Ohio v. EPA, 603 U.S. 279 (2024);
7. Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, 594 U.S. 139 (2021);
8. Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181 (2023);
9. Carson v. Makin, 596 U.S. 767 (2022); and
10. Roman Cath. Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, 592 U.S. 14 (2020).

In effectuating repeals of facially unlawful regulations, agency heads shall finalize rules without notice and comment, where doing so is consistent with the “good cause” exception in the Administrative Procedure Act.  That exception allows agencies to dispense with notice-and-comment rulemaking when that process would be “impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.”  Retaining and enforcing facially unlawful regulations is clearly contrary to the public interest.  Furthermore, notice-and-comment proceedings are “unnecessary” where repeal is required as a matter of law to ensure consistency with a ruling of the United States Supreme Court.  Agencies thus have ample cause and the legal authority to immediately repeal unlawful regulations.

Accordingly, I hereby direct:

1. Following the 60-day review period ordered in Executive Order 14219 to identify unlawful and potentially unlawful regulations, agencies shall immediately take steps to effectuate the repeal of any regulation, or the portion of any regulation, that clearly exceeds the agency’s statutory authority or is otherwise unlawful.  Agencies should give priority to the regulations in conflict with the United States Supreme Court decisions listed earlier in this memorandum.  The repeal of each unlawful regulation shall be accompanied by a brief statement of the reasons that the “good cause” exception applies.
2. Within 30 days of the conclusion of the review period directed in Executive Order 14219 to identify unlawful and potentially unlawful regulations, agencies shall submit to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs a one-page summary of each regulation that was initially identified as falling within one of the categories specified in section 2(a) of that Executive Order, but which has not been targeted for repeal, explaining the basis for the decision not to repeal that regulation.