Notice & Comment

Notice & Comment

Notice & Comment

Preserving wellness programs by infringing on privacy

A bill is moving through Congress—the Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act—that would effectively allow businesses to require their employees to disclose lots of sensitive medical data, including their genetic information. It’s an ugly piece of legislation. Explaining why is tricky, but bear with me. * * * The point of workplace wellness programs is to […]

Notice & Comment

The D.C. Circuit’s “Trump Card” for Executive Orders

As countless commentators have observed, President Trump’s first months in office have been marked by the issuance of significant executive orders and other executive actions aimed at undoing or reforming the work of his predecessor, and charting a new policy course forward. In that respect, Trump was not a break from recent experience, but a continuation […]

Notice & Comment

A Nudge on the Individual Mandate

Citing President Trump’s January 20 Executive Order, the IRS has altered the reporting mechanism for “minimum essential coverage” under the Affordable Care Act. A Form 1040 taxpayer, for example, had to check a box on line 61 to confirm coverage. If a taxpayer did not do so, the form was rejected. Because the “executive order […]

Notice & Comment

Bull & Ellig on Improving Regulatory Impact Analysis via Judicial Review (AdLaw Bridge Series)

Earlier this month the Center for the Study of the Administrative State hosted a terrific public policy conference on the Hill entitled The Time for Regulatory Reform in Congress. We discussed most of the  legislative regulatory reform proposals pending in Congress as well as a number of additional ideas that scholars have suggested. Video of the panels and […]

Notice & Comment

The Golden State Mandate

Now that Republicans have finally released their alternative to Obamacare, I’ve got an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times encouraging California and other blue states to take action to protect themselves. [T]he Republican bill would set chaos in motion because it would immediately eliminate the individual mandate — that is, the tax penalty imposed on […]

Notice & Comment

Federalism and the American Health Care Act

For Vox’s Big Idea series, I’ve adapted my essay, Federalism and the End of Obamacare. Here’s a taste: Republicans may talk the talk of devolving health care policy to the states, but that’s not what the American Health Care Act does. Instead, it starves health reform of the funding upon which it depends. Most significantly, […]

Notice & Comment

Abusing Discretion in Sentencing after Beckles

Yesterday, the Supreme Court decided Beckles v. United States. The case involved a challenge to the federal sentencing guidelines. Section 4B1.1 of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines prescribes a sentencing enhancement for certain criminal defendants if the offense of conviction is a “crime of violence.”  At the time of Beckles’s conviction, the guideline defined “crime of […]

Notice & Comment

Economic Substance De-Codification and the Supreme Court

As one of the revenue raisers to offset the costs associated with the Affordable Care Act, Congress added Section 7701(o) to the tax code. That provision, which has nothing to do with health care, codifies the “economic substance doctrine” created by the federal district courts and appellate courts. Generally speaking, under the doctrine, the lower […]

Notice & Comment

Exciting New Comparative Administrative Law Blog

If the first blog post by Susan Rose-Ackerman is any indication, the new Admin Law Blog (on comparative administrative law) should be really terrific. From the welcome post: Welcome to the Admin Law Blog! This is a forum for the discussion of ideas and developments of interest to scholars of administrative law across the common law world. It […]

Notice & Comment

Symposium Issue: A Future Without the Administrative State? (AdLaw Bridge Series)

Last March the Missouri Law Review hosted a terrific symposium, organized by Professor Erin Morrow Hawley, entitled A Future Without the Administrative State? (video here). The published issue from the symposium was just posted to the Law Review‘s website. I tweeted out thread of summaries/links to each piece here. Professor Hawley’s introduction is definitely a […]

Notice & Comment

Taming the Shallow State, by Jennifer Nou

The gloves have now come off in the battle between President Trump and an increasingly alarmed federal bureaucracy. EPA employees are in the streets. The National Park Service is sending out insubordinate tweets. Intelligence agencies are not just leaking, they’re gushing. Bureaucratic resistance is, of course, not new. But what does seem unprecedented is the […]