In the Sackett v. EPA decision today, the Supreme Court rejected a broad argument that the Sacketts' constitutional due process rights had been violated when they could not go to court immediately to challenge an EPA order requiring them to remove fill and replant vegetation on their property. But the Court did hold that under the relevant statutes – the Clean Water Act and a broader statute authorizing judicial review of agency action, the Administrative Procedure Act – the Sacketts were entitled to judicial review of EPA's order as soon as EPA issued it. It rejected the agency's arguments that the Act ought to be understood to preclude judicial review until EPA brought an enforcement action in court. In so doing, it limited the usefulness of an important EPA enforcement tool.

The Sacketts' side of the case had a number of sympathetic aspects. Two individuals were up …

This post was written by CPR President Rena Steinzor and CPR Policy Analyst James Goodwin.

Earlier today, OIRA Administrator Cass Sunstein released a new memorandum to agencies directing them to consider and account for the “cumulative” costs of their regulations.  Attacking the cumulative costs of regulation has been a favored tactic among regulated industries and their allies in Congress (it's a feature in many anti-regulatory bills, such as the Regulatory Accountability Act).  Rather than responding forcefully to the faulty cumulative costs premise, the Obama Administration has instead bought into it. The memo outlines principles and not specific technical prescriptions for how rules will be written, but it’s likely the agencies will follow the directions from the White House. What we’re left with is a solution in search of a problem that could further delay or derail badly needed solutions to real problems. 

As with …

House GOP leaders may vote as early as this week on legislation that would eliminate the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), a cost-saving measure that was established as part of the national health care reform Congress passed in 2010.  House leaders have also attached national restrictions on the right of patients to recover damages for medical malpractice (H.R. 5) to the IPAB bill, with the joint bill being called H.R. 5.  The sponsors of the bills allege that the savings from tort reform will replace the money that would be lost if the cost savings board is eliminated.  The combination of the two measures is pure politics.  Repeal of the cost-savings board enjoyed some bipartisan support before GOP leaders attached the tort restrictions to it.  Democrats are unwilling to vote for a bill that also limits the rights of tort victims.  GOP leaders therefore hope …

On Tuesday, the House Judiciary committee is marking up the Regulatory Freeze for Jobs Act (H.R. 4078), which would block virtually any “significant regulatory action”—basically, any step toward promulgating any regulation that has a large economic impact or is otherwise controversial— as long as unemployment is over 6 percent.   Rather than support initiatives that actually help the unemployed, a band of House Republicans prefer another cheap political trick here.  The reality is that a moratorium would leave millions of Americans more vulnerable to health, safety, environmental, and economic risks, without improving the economy at all.  In fact, the bill has the potential to shrink economic activity, not grow it. 

To begin with, all of the economic studies agree:  regulation does not cause a net loss in jobs. As other CPR Member Scholars and I have discussed (see here, here, here, here and here, for example …

A conventional approach to safety is based on the concept of design events. A building code might say, for example, that a building should be able to survive a 7.0 earthquake. This approach has been basic to the regulation of nuclear reactors. As the interim report of the post-Fukushima NRC task force explains:

The regulation also requires that design bases . . . reflect (1) appropriate consideration of the most severe of the natural phenomena that have been historically reported for the site and surrounding region, with sufficient margin for the limited accuracy and quantity of the historical data and the period of time in which the data have been accumulated, (2) appropriate combinations of the effects of normal and accident conditions with the effects of the natural phenomena, and (3) the importance of the safety functions to be performed. p. 25

The report points out two flaws with …

Inside EPA is reporting that yet another critical EPA rulemaking is now being delayed indefinitely.  This time it’s the agency’s rulemaking to codify a draft guidance clarifying whether Clean Water Act protections apply to wetlands and other marginal waters.

EPA had projected on its online rulemaking gateway that it expected to issue a proposed rule this month. In the recent  Issue Alert that CPR President Rena Steinzor and I wrote, we were skeptical about this deadline, because the EPA has not yet even sent a draft proposal to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for centralized review—a process that often takes several months, and in some cases well over a year.

The Inside EPA article notes that the EPA’s rulemaking gateway was changed at some point since March 5th, so that it now provides no deadline for issuing a …

In 1975, Indiana lawmakers joined a small but growing group of state legislatures passing aggressive medical malpractice “reforms.”  Indiana’s law capped damages that victims of medical malpractice can recover at $500,000 and eliminated damages for pain-and-suffering altogether, Frank Cornelius, a lobbyist for the Insurance Institute of Indiana, played a role in helping pass this legislation.  Twenty years later, Cornelius suffered a tragic series of negligent medical errors that left him wheelchair-bound, dependent on a respirator to breathe, and requiring a morphine drip for continuous physical pain.  Facing medical expenses and lost wages of $5 million if he lived to retirement age, Cornelius experienced first-hand the effects of his lobbying for the insurance industry:  he was forced to settle his claims for the $500,000 limit.  In an op-ed in The New York Times several years later, Mr. Cornelius told his story, expressing regret and noting …

Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum, the case asking whether corporations can be liable in federal court for violations of international human rights law.  In the decision under review, the Second Circuit – unlike every other circuit court to consider the question – had held that they could never be liable.  So one might think that a logical way for the petitioners to begin their oral argument would be to give an example or two where international law had recognized corporate liability.  And, in fact, Justice “Swing Vote” Kennedy hit the attorney for the petitioners with that very question before he had completed his opening statement. 

It wasn’t a good sign when the attorney didn’t come up with any examples.  (He might have pointed out that after World War II, the Allies broke up IG Farben because of its …

Cross-posted from Legal Planet.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has upheld a district court ruling that the federal government is liable for damage from the Katrina storm surge that went up the MRGO canal into the city. As I read the opinion, it is limited in three ways. First, it is crucial that MRGO — the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet — was a navigation project, not a flood control project. The government is immune from flooding caused by a flood control project. Second, the specific negligent action, failure to shore up the sides of the channel, was primarily related to protecting the canal itself rather than to flood control. And third, failure to shore up the sides was not a policy decision, but was based on careless science that led the Corps of Engineers to conclude that there was no risk of harm from …