The White House is asking for input on how the federal government can advance equity and better support underserved groups. As a policy analyst who has studied the federal regulatory system for more than a dozen years, I have some answers — and I submitted them today. My recommendations focus on the White House rulemaking process and offer the Biden administration a comprehensive blueprint for promoting racial justice and equity through agencies’ regulatory decision-making.

To put it bluntly, the U.S. regulatory system is racist.

Key institutions and procedures throughout the rulemaking process contribute to structural racism in our society, resulting in policies that exacerbate racial injustice and inequity. We can’t have truly equitable regulatory policy unless and until these features of the regulatory system are reformed or eliminated.

To make good on its promise to advance equity, the Biden administration must overhaul two interrelated components of the regulatory system: how agencies go about evaluating draft regulations and how they go about obtaining policy-relevant information.

The predominant form of regulatory evaluation is a controversial form of cost-benefit analysis that, through its theoretical assumptions and methodologies, embeds racism in regulatory decision-making. As this practice has grown in influence, it has displaced …