On July 21, 2020, the National Marine Fisheries Service (“NMFS”) published a rule requiring owners and operators of for-hire vessel operating in the Gulf of Mexico to submit electronic fishing reports upon their return to port “prior to removing any fish from the vessel” (or within 30 minutes if no fish had been retained). Even […]

Although Tax Day passed on April 18, 2022, for some taxpayers a different type of tax deadline is approaching. Many tax attorneys, like myself, know that June 30, 2022, is the last day on which certain taxpayers who had capital gains in 2021 can defer paying tax on those gains until 2026 by investing them […]

The ABA Administrative Law Section is now soliciting submissions for the 2022 Gellhorn-Sargentich Law Student Essay Award. The Section welcomes submissions discussing any topic in administrative law. All entries must be emailed by 7:00 pm ET on June 30, 2022. Entrants must submit two files to Section Director Anne Kiefer via email to anne.kiefer@americanbar.org. The […]

The Fifth Circuit’s [WG1] recent decision in Jarkesy v. SEC has breathed new life into the debate over the propriety of double for-cause tenure. And whereas there is no shortage of thoughtful commentary about the constitutional validity of tenure protections—including from contributors on this blog—far less has been said about an equally important step of the […]

Sharing this job announcement (below). I’m always happy to post job openings in administrative law here on the blog, so please don’t hesitate to reach out. The Office of the General Counsel (OGC) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is currently seeking applications for General Attorney positions in its Centers for […]

In Inter-Cooperative Exchange v. Department of Commerce, — F.4th —, 2022 WL 2036299 (June 7, 2022), a Ninth-Circuit panel split over the proper approach to searching a government employee’s personal cell phone for records responsive to a FOIA request.  As the majority irreverently described the suit: “In this case, crab fishers pull their nets from […]

The University of Minnesota Law School is delighted to host the Seventh Annual Administrative Law New Scholarship Roundtable this week, on June 22 and 23, here in Minneapolis. This rotating workshop has come to play a significant role in supporting administrative law scholarship and a sense of community among administrative law scholars. The works-in-progress that […]

BYU Law will host a series of free webinars on antitrust and tech-related regulatory issues. The first one will be next Tuesday, June 28, at noon eastern. Here is the registration link: https://byu.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0H63Iu7BIoIsHpc It should be a lively discussion.

“Court dockets in this district overflow with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) matters.  Many of those cases seek reams of records, requiring massive efforts from defendant agencies. . . . This is the system Congress hath wrought. And which this Court must dutifully implement.” American Center for Law and Justice v. DHS, Dkt. No. 21-1364 […]

What is Chevron: a rule of decision, a standard of review, or an ambiguity resolver? Professor Kristin Hickman and R. David Hahn concluded it was a standard of review. Until this week, I was firmly in their camp. But after the Supreme Court’s decision in American Health Association v. Becerra, I have defected: Chevron deference […]

At the Free State Foundation’s Fourteenth Annual Policy Conference on May 6, FTC Commissioner Noah Phillips predicted that FTC Chair Lina Khan’s likely plans to issue substantive rules for “unfair methods of competition” will be “illegal and unconstitutional,” and Commissioner Christine Wilson concurred. Specifically, while addressing the D.C. Circuit‘s untested Petroleum Refiners Association v. FTC […]

Everyone knows Chevron and Auer deference, where federal courts defer to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes and rules. State courts, too, often similarly defer. The arguments for and against these deference doctrines are well known. Much lesser known is how state (and even federal) courts regularly defer to municipalities’ interpretations of their own ordinances. […]

Today the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in American Hospital Association v. Becerra, ruling against the federal government. The case involves a complicated area of the Medicare reimbursement statutory scheme, and the Court held that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) does not have discretion under the statute to adjust reimbursement rates […]

In Marino v. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 33 F.4th 593 (2022), the D.C. Circuit denied plaintiffs’ standing to challenge the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) decision that it lacked enforcement authority.  In particular, NOAA had disclaimed authority to enforce provisions of “special exception permits” that required SeaWorld to perform necropsies on its orca […]