Sponsors (17)
Introduced January 9, 2025 by Mark E. Green · Last progress January 9, 2025
The bill increases transparency and clarifies what counts as a 'rule' and which decisions rely on Chevron, but its automatic sunset mechanism and changes to CRA timing risk rapid loss or weakening of rules, reduced agency authority, and heightened legal and regulatory uncertainty for businesses and the public.
Small businesses, taxpayers, and other regulated parties: clearer statutory definitions of 'rule' (by referencing 5 U.S.C. §551) reduce legal uncertainty about what counts as a rule and what standards apply to agency actions.
Small businesses and consumers: clarifying the meaning of 'sunset date' helps businesses and consumers know when regulatory obligations expire, aiding compliance planning.
Taxpayers and state/local governments: GAO will publish a consolidated, agency- and date-organized list of court decisions upholding agency rules under Chevron, increasing transparency about which regulations rely on Chevron deference.
Small businesses, taxpayers, and state/local governments: assigning automatic staggered sunset dates could cause large numbers of existing rules to lapse quickly, creating regulatory gaps and abrupt compliance changes within weeks to months.
Taxpayers and the public: automatic removal or weakening of rules tied to Chevron-related decisions may reduce agencies' ability to interpret statutes and enforce protections, risking degradation of health, safety, and environmental safeguards.
Taxpayers and small businesses: explicitly defining or signaling limits to Chevron deference and tying 'rule' narrowly to §551 could narrow agency authority and prompt litigation uncertainty about how courts will treat agency interpretations.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Directs GAO to list rules upheld by Chevron deference, assigns staggered statutory sunset dates to those rules, and removes the CRA’s 60-day disapproval filing window for them.
Requires the Government Accountability Office (Comptroller General) to compile a list, within 180 days of enactment, of every federal-court decision that upheld an agency rule based on Chevron deference and that still governs an existing rule. The GAO list must group entries by issuing agency, order them by rule date, and assign a staggered “sunset date” to each listed rule so that the most recent rule for each agency expires 30 days after publication and each earlier rule expires 30 days after the next newer rule’s sunset. Also applies the Congressional Review Act to those rules but removes the CRA’s normal 60-day window for filing a joint resolution of disapproval; otherwise CRA procedures apply. The effect is an automatic, rolling expiration schedule for rules court-validated under Chevron, plus a delayed CRA disapproval timing rule for those same rules.