On January 30th, the President signed an Executive Order (EO) that requires Agencies to cut two existing regulations for every new rule introduced. Yesterday, three public advocacy groups - The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Communications Workers of America, and Public Citizen - joined together to file a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia alleging that Executive agencies cannot lawfully comply with the President's two for one order because doing so would violate the statutes under which agencies operate. The suit asks the court to issue a declaration that the order cannot be lawfully implemented and to bar Agencies from implementing the order.
According to these groups, the President's order "...would deny Americans the b asic protections they rightly expect. New efforts to stop pollution don't automatically make old ones unnecessary. When you make policy by tweet, it yields irrational rules. This order imposes a false choice between clean air, clean water, safe food and other environmental safeguards."
Another spokesperson stated: "It is unbelievable that the ... administration is demanding that workers trade off one set of job health and safety protections in order to get protection from another equally dangerous condition. This order means that the asbestos workplace standard, for example, could be discarded in order to adopt safeguards for nurses from infectious diseases in their workplaces. This violates the mission of the Occupational Safety and Health administration to protect workers' safety and health. It also violates common sense."
One of the attorneys representing these groups stated: "When presidents overreach, it is up to the courts to remind them no one is above the law and hold them to the U.S. Constitution. This is one of those times."
Fun times.
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