Trump's deregulatory efforts keep losing in court---and the losses could make it harder for future administrations to deregulate

The Trump administration has engaged in a well-publicized and wide ranging deregulatory campaign. As a key part of this effort, Trump-led agencies have delayed, modified, or repealed rules issued late in the Obama era. These deregulatory efforts have been tracked by Brookings and prior work in this...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Policy File 2018
Main Author: Raso, Connor
Format: Report
Language:English
Subjects:
Government
Judiciary
The Brookings Institution
Online Access:Request full text
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Summary:The Trump administration has engaged in a well-publicized and wide ranging deregulatory campaign. As a key part of this effort, Trump-led agencies have delayed, modified, or repealed rules issued late in the Obama era. These deregulatory efforts have been tracked by Brookings and prior work in this Brookings series has analyzed their impact. This piece analyzes an important related issue: how has Trump-era deregulation fared when challenged in courts? Trump era deregulation has prompted a number of legal challenges, largely on the grounds that agencies have not followed the procedures required to change rules. Most but not all of these challenges have been to EPA deregulatory efforts. Analysts on both the left and right ends of the political spectrum have agreed that the administration has fared poorly in the courts. This conventional wisdom is correct. According to a running tally of court challenges to Trump-era deregulatory rules, the administration has prevailed in one case and either lost or abandoned its position in 18 cases. This 5 percent "win rate" is far below the normal agency win rate, which averages 69 percent across eleven studies.