The bipartisan Promoting Women in Aviation Act was introduced in the US Senate on March 30, 2023. The legislation aims to establish the Women in Aviation Advisory Committee (WIAAC) to advise the Secretary of Transportation and the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on matters related to women in the aviation industry. The WIAAC […]
Today’s Ad Law Reading Room entry is “Administrative Subordination” by Professor Bijal Shah, which is forthcoming in the University of Chicago Law Review. Here is the abstract: Much of the work on immigration enforcement and environmental justice assumes that agencies negatively impact vulnerable marginalized people as a result of individualized bias or arbitrariness in administration. […]
Fans of Justice Neil Gorsuch have consistently celebrated his “judicial humility,” his abhorrence of inserting “personal preferences” into judicial decisions, and his “critic[ism] of judicial activism.” The Justice himself has remarked on the “modest[y]” of the court since he joined. (Akil Amar, who regards himself as a liberal, managed to fit “modesty” and “humility” into the […]
The D. C. Circuit issued only two opinions this week. In Air Excursions LLC v. Yellen, No. 22-5125, the D.C. Circuit held that Air Excursions, LLC, a regional airline serving Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, had no “competitor standing” under Article III to challenge the Department of Treasury’s disbursement of $30 million in COVID-relief funds […]
Last week, the Fifth Circuit issued an unpublished order in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. Food and Drug Administration, partially staying the district court’s earlier order overturning the FDA’s approval of mifepristone. Standing, as we all know, requires that the plaintiffs suffered an injury in fact that is “actual or imminent.” Standing rules can be unpredictable, but when determining whether a […]
While the “major questions doctrine” developed over a series of important cases, the Supreme Court’s express recognition of the doctrine last Term in West Virginia v. EPA has dramatically raised its profile. Litigants are now identifying all sorts of “major questions” and claiming that the doctrine is triggered by a wide variety of government actions ranging from the EPA’s […]
Yesterday, my husband took me to see a performance by the Glenn Miller Orchestra. The band is the modern iteration of Glenn Miller and his Orchestra, the great swing band of the late 1930s and early 1940s. The orchestra disbanded after Glenn Miller went missing while serving in World War II but formed again in […]
I. Introduction The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved mifepristone for terminating pregnancy in 2000. On April 7, 2023, a Texas court issued a preliminary injunction suspending FDA approval in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, et al., v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, et al. On April 12, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals partially overruled, allowing the […]
I’ve got a new article up at The Atlantic using the mifepristone case to tee off on both nationwide injunctions and their evil twin, “universal vacatur” under the Administrative Procedure Act. The arguments about nationwide injunctions are by this point familiar, though I still think it’s under-appreciated the extent to which they have always been […]
As readers of this blog surely know, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been under sustained legal and political attack from the financial institutions it regulates since its very creation. At first, litigation side of these attacks on the Bureau’s structure failed. But with the consolidation of a solid anti-administrative-state majority, the tide has begun […]
Today, Ad Law Reading Room brings you “Power Corrupts” by Professor Emily Bremer. Here is the abstract: Administrative agencies bear principal responsibility for keeping the federal government’s promises by giving effect in the real world to the laws Congress enacts. If administrative law’s goal was to help agencies fulfill this responsibility, its lodestar would be […]
I started D.C. Circuit Review — Reviewed in 2015 because I’m an “admin law” person and the D.C. Circuit is the nation’s home for administrative law litigation. As I explained in a post about whether the D.C. Circuit truly is the nation’s “second most important court”: Increasingly, however, it feels like the D.C. Circuit’s outsized […]
Big news for regulatory policy today as the Biden-Harris administration rolls out several documents that make significant changes to regulatory policy. The main documents are an Executive Order on Modernizing Regulatory Review, a draft of potential revisions to Circular A-4, and a draft of potential revisions to Circular A-94. OIRA Administrator Ricky Revesz penned a […]
The ABA Section of Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice invites you to register for the 2023 Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice Institute and the Homeland Security Law Institute, both of which will be held virtually on April 27, 2023. Our two annual conferences, which have been combined into one Virtual Live Event, will cover rulemaking, judicial review, […]
Last week the D.C. Circuit issued United States v. Otunyo, in which the panel (Rao, Walker, Ginsburg) affirmed the conviction of appellant Otunyo for bank fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy to launder money, for which he was sentenced to 90 months’ imprisonment. Otunyo’s lead argument was that Kastigar v. United States precluded the government […]