Notice & Comment

Recent Rulemakings Reviewed: September 2026

Recent Rulemakings Reviewed is a monthly quantitative snapshot of federal regulatory activity, drawn from FRTracker—a platform that ingests Federal Register documents and decomposes binding rules into structured “obligations.”

An “obligation” in this dataset is a single regulated duty extracted from a rule’s text, comprised of: an actor (e.g., operator, employer, importer), a deontic modal (must, shall, may not), and an action.

Each issue of Recent Rulemakings Reviewed will present the preceding month’s key numbers, some developments worth watching, and links for readers who want to dig deeper.

A note on the figures: all counts are drawn from FRTracker as of this column’s publication date. Because document processing and obligation extraction run continuously, monthly totals and per-rule counts can shift modestly as records are reprocessed; the numbers here reflect the database as it stood the day this issue was published.

The numbers

  • Documents published (excluding presidential documents): 2,194
    • vs August 2026: 2,079
    • vs September 2025: 2,289
  • Final rules: 216
    • vs August 2026: 281
    • vs September 2025: 239
  • Proposed rules: 142
    • vs August 2026: 143
    • vs September 2025: 127
  • Rules flagged significant in Federal Register metadata: 21
    • vs August 2026: 31
    • vs September 2025: 34
  • Comment periods closed last month: 637
  • Compliance obligations extracted from last month’s publications: 3,892

The four document-count rows above are the Federal Register’s own counts, not FRTracker’s. The two figures below them — comment periods closed, and compliance obligations — are FRTracker’s; the Federal Register publishes neither.

September published more documents than August but fewer rules. Documents rose from 2,079 to 2,194 because notices did (1,655 to 1,836); final rules fell from 281 to 216, a 23% drop, while proposed rules held at 142 against 143. Significant designations fell from 31 to 21 — the lowest count since this series began in April (33, 34, 33, 41, 31, and now 21).

Against September 2025 the month is lighter on rules and heavier on proposals: final rules down 10% (216 against 239), proposals up 12% (142 against 127), significant designations down 38% (21 against 34). Fewer final rules, and fewer flagged, on both comparisons — and, as the Remarkable Rulemakings section below describes, a month whose regulatory text sits mostly in proposals. September’s 142 proposed rules carry 2,663 compliance obligations; its 216 final rules carry 1,229. Sixty-eight percent of the month’s rule obligations are proposed, not binding. August’s column put the same share at nearly half.

The Shortcut Ledger

Not every rule travels the full notice-and-comment route. An agency can issue a rule as interim-final (issued in final form, with comment invited afterward), direct-final (effective unless someone objects), or temporary—each a shortcut around the ordinary notice-and-comment sequence, available where the conditions its statutory basis requires are satisfied. The label alone is neither proof that the shortcut was proper nor proof that it was not and is offered purely in an informational capacity; the good-cause exception these rules usually rest on can be entirely valid. The pathways are nonetheless relevant, because they are where binding obligations reach the public without a proposal first. The running ledger is at frtracker.app/shortcutledger.

PathwayRulesObligations
Interim-final888
Direct-final35
Temporary2825
Total expedited39118

Every row above is classified from the Federal Register’s own ACTION field, not from our inference. Of September’s 216 final rules, 215 carry an ACTION value; the one that does not is a correction document (the Social Security Administration’s cardiovascular-criteria correction), and it sits outside the expedited rows.

A note on which obligation count this is. The “Obligations” column here — and every per-rule obligation figure in this column — is FRTracker’s extracted-requirement count, the same number shown on the linked Ledger and on each rule’s FRTracker page. The 3,892 figure in “The numbers” above is a narrower subset: only requirements typed COMPLIANCE_OBLIGATION. Each series is computed the same way throughout, but the two series are different measures and must not be compared to one another. (On the narrower method September’s expedited rows read 70 / 5 / 20; the shape is unchanged.)

The interim-final column is light again, and one rule is most of it. Across the series the interim-final pathway has run 8 rules and 166 obligations (June), 15 and 349 (July), 11 and 43 (August), and now 8 and 88. The heaviest of September’s eight — and the only significant rule the month published on any expedited pathway — is the Office of Personnel Management‘s Shared Certificates and Pooled Hiring Actions (published September 15, effective October 15, comments to November 16), at 51. By the agency’s summary it lets an appointing authority share a competitive or excepted-service certificate with other agencies and provides for OPM-led hiring actions for occupations common to many agencies. The other seven carry 37 between them.

The direct-final column went from heavy to nearly empty. August’s three direct-final rules carried 87 obligations, 83 of them in one Nuclear Regulatory Commission rule. September’s three carry five: the Food and Drug Administration‘s Nonclinical Testing Terminology (3), the Agriculture Department‘s Simplified Geographic Preference Procurement in Child Nutrition Programs (2), and an Environmental Protection Agency Kentucky air plan approval (none). The concentration August’s column described was a property of one document, not of the pathway.

The NEPA-procedures reached the Postal Service. The United States Postal Service published its National Environmental Policy Act Implementing Procedures as an interim final rule on September 25, effective the same day (17 obligations), to “partially rescind and update” procedures written to implement the Council on Environmental Quality regulations that no longer exist. The Department of Transportation‘s own National Environmental Policy Act Regulations — a final rule, flagged significant, 58 obligations — was published and took effect September 1. The agency-by-agency rewriting of NEPA procedures that July’s column first noted is still running.

Primary source: Federal Register (2026-18828, 2026-19720, 2026-17904) · FRTracker analysis

Remarkable Rulemakings

Four related proposals carry 44% of the month’s compliance obligations, and none are flagged significant. On September 18 the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council — the Office of Federal Procurement Policy with the Defense Department, the General Services Administration and NASA — published four proposed rules in its Revolutionary Federal Acquisition Regulation Overhaul: Parts 9, 27, and 47 (577 obligations extracted; 100 pages), Parts 8, 12, 13, 15, 38, 44, and 51 (446; 69 pages), Parts 14, 28, 36, and 52 (410; 49 pages), and Parts 16, 17, and 35 (353; 56 pages). They are the four densest documents of the month by extracted-requirement count, with 1,786 between them. On the narrower compliance-obligation measure used in “The numbers” above, the four carry 1,700 of the month’s 3,892 — 44%. Comments close on all four on October 19. None of the four carries the significance flag in the Federal Register’s metadata.

Each of the four preambles says the Council “is issuing twelve proposed rules” that will “streamline the FAR in its entirety” — two of the four add “if finalized” — implementing Executive Order 14275, Restoring Common Sense to Federal Procurement. June’s column noted the first installment of the series; with September’s four, eight of the twelve have been published, carrying 2,895 extracted obligations across the two batches. All of it is proposed, none of it binding, and every figure here describes the duties found in the text the Council published — not the text it would remove. Procurement is where the Federal Register’s own measures and this one diverge sharply this month: the FAR documents sit under the Office of Management and Budget in FRTracker’s agency classification (the Federal Register lists five agency entries for each, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy sitting within OMB), and that bucket leads September on obligations — 1,797 on eleven documents — while appearing nowhere in the document-count rankings.

Primary source: Federal Register (2026-19159, 2026-19162, 2026-19158, 2026-19160) · FRTracker analysis

The month’s densest final rule opens or expands hunting and fishing on 111 field stations; its heaviest significant final is a third of its size. The Fish and Wildlife Service‘s National Wildlife Refuge System; 2026-2027 Station-Specific Hunting and Sport Fishing Regulations, published September 1, carries 284 extracted obligations across 77 pages — the station-by-station rule for the 2026–2027 season that, by the agency’s summary, opens or expands “more than 1,450 opportunities for hunting and fishing” on 107 refuges and four fish hatcheries. It is not flagged significant. The significant final rule with the most obligations is the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration‘s Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule III for Model Years 2022 to 2031, published September 30 and effective November 30: 304 pages, 93 obligations. By its summary the rule “substantially recalibrat[es]” the Corporate Average Fuel Economy program and finalizes amended fuel-economy standards for model years 2022–2026 and 2027–2031. A 304-page significant rule carrying a third of the requirement count of a 77-page refuge rule is a reminder that the count measures the density of regulatory text, not its weight: a station-specific hunting regulation is written as hundreds of discrete permissions and conditions, each of which the extractor sees as a duty, while a fuel-economy standard is written as a small number of obligations with large numbers attached.

Primary source: Federal Register (2026-17895, 2026-19964) · FRTracker analysis

Volume and weight came apart again. The Commerce Department led September on document count with 243 filings carrying 84 extracted obligations; the Securities and Exchange Commission was second with 234 carrying 173; the Energy Department filed 135 carrying 57. On the obligation side the FAR documents’ bucket leads with 1,797 on eleven documents, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is second with 397 on 29 — 291 of them in one proposal, Regulatory Enhancements for Reactor Licensing, Decommissioning, and Operational Oversight — and the Treasury Department third with 352 on 78. The Interior Department‘s 344 obligations on 131 documents are 284 refuge-hunting obligations and 60 of everything else. Document counts measure how often an agency writes to the Federal Register but they do not measure what it writes.

Three Developments Worth Watching

1. Two GENIUS Act rulemakings in two days. The Federal Reserve Board proposed Implementing the Federal Reserve Board’s Responsibilities Under the GENIUS Act on September 29 — regulations for Board-supervised permitted payment stablecoin issuers and for the Act’s prohibition on tying — with comments due November 30; 129 obligations extracted; not flagged significant. The next day the Treasury Department, on behalf of the Stablecoin Certification Review Committee, published Forms and Procedures for Review of State Certifications by the Stablecoin Certification Review Committee as an interim final rule, effective on publication, with comments also due November 30 (11 obligations). The two address different assignments under the statute — the Board’s supervisory responsibilities and the Committee’s review of state regulators’ certifications — and the Treasury rule says in terms that its interim forms exist so that certifications can be submitted “by the effective date of the GENIUS Act.” Together they are a signal that stablecoin regulation has moved from statute to rule text.

Primary source: Federal Register (2026-19860, 2026-19966) · FRTracker analysis

2. Two environmental rollbacks, two statutes. The Environmental Protection Agency‘s Partial Repeal of the Carbon Pollution Standards for Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units, a final rule flagged significant and published September 17 (effective November 16; 16 obligations), repeals, in the agency’s words, “most provisions” of the 2024 standards: the emission guidelines for existing steam generating units, the carbon-capture-based standards for coal-fired units undertaking a large modification, and the carbon-capture-based “Phase 2” standards for new base-load combustion turbines. The agency notes a concurrent supplemental proposal soliciting comment on rescinding all greenhouse-gas requirements for these units. Separately, the EPA and the Department of the Army published a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking on the definition of “Waters of the United States” on September 9 — flagged significant, seven obligations — adding “additional regulatory options on certain aspects” of their November 2025 proposal to revise the Clean Water Act‘s jurisdictional reach in light of Sackett v. EPA. Its comment window is 30 days, closing October 9. (August’s Roadless Rule proposal, this column’s lead development last month, received a 15-day extension on September 11; comments now close October 6.)

Primary source: Federal Register (2026-19071, 2026-18317, 2026-18648, 2026-16965) · FRTracker analysis

3. The civil-service rewrite moves to the excepted service. The Office of Personnel Management‘s Employment in the Excepted Service, proposed September 18 and flagged significant, is the densest significant document of the month at 108 extracted obligations. By the agency’s summary it would conform OPM’s regulations to the current excepted-service schedules — “including Schedules E, Policy/Career, and G” — modernize the part 302 procedures while preserving veterans’ preference and other priority placement rights, and authorize conversions of Pathways Programs participants to Schedule Policy/Career. Comments close November 17. It arrives as August’s package took effect: the four OPM rules on reductions in force and appeals became effective September 2, and the reduction-in-force rule was corrected again on September 15.

Primary source: Federal Register (2026-19222, 2026-18800) · FRTracker analysis

Further Reading

Most active agencies last month (number = Federal Register documents published):

Significant rules published. Federal Register metadata marks these documents significant under E.O. 12866 §3(f). We show those with the largest extracted obligation count; ordering is ours, designation is theirs.

Rules that took effect. Final rules that Federal Register metadata marks significant under E.O. 12866 §3(f) and whose effective date fell in September, ordered by extracted obligation count. Ordering is ours; the significance designation is theirs. One of them — OPM’s FLSA rule — reached effect through an expedited pathway and appears in the Shortcut Ledger’s series as well. Most of these were published in earlier months: a rule’s effective date and its publication date are different things, and this list is keyed to the former. All eighteen qualifying documents are listed; each was confirmed against the Federal Register’s own metadata as a final rule carrying the significance flag.

Seven additional significant rules took effect in September with no obligations extracted. Five are corrections: OPM’s Reduction in Force; Correction of September 15; three of its August 25 corrections to the civil-service package — Reduction in Force, Reduction in Force Appeals and Streamlining Probationary and Trial Period Appeals (the fourth, to Suitability Action Appeals, carries one obligation and is listed above); and Labor’s VEVRAA correction. Two are substantive rules: OPM’s Differential Pay for Prescribed Wildland Fire Activities, and the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service‘s Rescinding the Definition of “Harm” Under the Endangered Species Act — a significant deregulatory rule whose published text yielded no extractable obligations. The rule removes the definition from 50 CFR part 17 and part 222; a rule written as deletions publishes no duties for the extractor to count. What the rule rescinds is a regulatory definition; the Endangered Species Act‘s own prohibition on “take” is statute, and no regulation can rescind it.

For readers who want the underlying dataset: the full monthly snapshot is at frtracker.app/monthly/2026-09, with methodology at frtracker.app/methodology.

Andrew Leahey is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Law at Drexel Kline School of Law.

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