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Directing the Repeal of Unlawful Regulations

Presidential Action • April 09, 2025 • Document 8428
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Summary

President Donald Trump has issued a memorandum instructing executive departments and agencies to identify and repeal regulations deemed unlawful, particularly those that conflict with recent Supreme Court decisions. This initiative, part of Executive Order 14219, aims to promote economic growth by reducing regulatory burdens on businesses and consumers. The directive allows for bypassing traditional notice-and-comment procedures under certain conditions, potentially sparking legal and political debate over the balance of power between the executive branch and regulatory agencies.

Full Text

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  Yet, despite these critical course corrections, unlawful regulations — often promulgated in reliance on now-superseded Supreme Court decisions — remain on the books.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: 

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: