President Donald J. Trump ordered all federal agencies to compile lists of regulations for possible removal in an Executive Order (E.O. 14219) signed February 19 and published February 25 (90 Fed. Reg. 10583).

The president directed agency heads to conduct a process of regulatory review, coordinating with the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and teams from the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Service assigned to their departments. Agencies also must focus their enforcement resources, de-emphasizing the enforcement of certain regulations.

Within 60 days, agency heads must identify several types of regulations, including those that:

• Are unconstitutional or raise serious constitutional issues—rules that exceed the federal government’s power established in the constitution;
• Are based on the delegation of legislative power;
• Are based on anything other than a strict reading of authorizing statutes;
• Concern economic, political, or social issues not clearly authorized by statute;
• Impose significant costs on private parties that aren’t outweighed by public benefits;
• Unjustifiably impede disaster response, economic development, energy production, foreign policy objectives, inflation reduction, infrastructure development, research and development, and technological innovation; and
• Impose undue burdens on small businesses or impede private enterprise and entrepreneurship.

Agency heads must provide the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the OMB with lists of regulations that meet the above criteria. The OIRA administrator then must develop a Unified Regulatory Agenda to rescind or modify the identified regulations.

The order also directs agency heads to de-prioritize the enforcement of regulations based on “anything other than the best reading of a statute.” To promulgate new regulations, agency heads must continue following the process established in E.O. 12866.

A January 31 Executive Order (Unleashing Prosperity through Deregulation (E.O. 14192)) directed agencies to remove 10 federal rules for every new one established.

At the end of the Biden administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was still developing six “economically significant” rulemakings—four new regulations and two revisions. Two of the new rulemakings included the creation of a new standard addressing workplace violence in health care and social services and another for infectious disease exposures in healthcare settings. OSHA was also developing industry-specific standards for communications towers and tree care.

OSHA also was working on updating its decades-old fire brigades standard as an emergency response rule and revisions to its process safety management regulations aimed at preventing major chemical accidents.

OSHA proposed a new heat injury and illness prevention standard last summer but didn’t consider the proposed rule “economically significant.”

Some administrative law scholars have debated the constitutionality of OSHA’s standard-setting authority under the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act of 1970, calling it an inappropriate delegation of legislative power. Before becoming former President Barack Obama’s OIRA administrator, Cass R. Sunstein authored an economics working paper titled “Is OSHA Constitutional?”

The Supreme Court most recently examined OSHA’s authority in 2022 when it rescinded the agency’s COVID-19 “vaccinate-or-test” emergency temporary standard (ETS). The justices ruled that OSHA exceeded its authority under the OSH Act when it established the emergency rule on widespread vaccination.