Sen Warren Leads Senate Response to End of Chevron Doctrine

After a Supreme Court stacked with Trump-appointed justices overturned the 40-year-old Chevron deference doctrine, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), Edward Markey (D-MA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Peter Welch (D-VT), and Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced the Stop Corporate Capture Act (SCCA). The SCCA codifies the Chevron doctrine and strengthens the rulemaking process to block corporations from hijacking our government. The legislation would:

Protect Chevron Doctrine

• Codify Chevron deference, allowing expert agencies to conduct rulemaking in line with their reasonable interpretation of their authorizing statutes.

Modernize and Reform the Regulatory Process

• Streamline the White House’s review period for regulations, creating a 120-day time limit for review. 
• Authorize agencies to reinstate rules that are rescinded by Congress through the Congressional Review Act.
• Reform agencies’ cost-benefit analysis to emphasize public benefits of a rule, including non-quantifiable benefits like promoting human dignity, securing child safety, and preventing discrimination. 

Empower and Expand Public Participation in Rulemaking

• Create an Office of the Public Advocate to help members of the public participate more effectively in regulatory proceedings.
• Strengthen agency procedures for notifying the public about pending rulemakings.
• Provide the public with greater authority to hold agencies accountable for unreasonable delays in completing rules. 
• Require agencies to respond to citizen petitions for rulemaking that contain 100,000 or more signatures.

Increase Transparency and Protect Independent Expertise in Rulemaking

• Require all rulemaking participants to disclose industry-funded research or other related conflicts of interest.
• Require any submitted scientific or other technical research that raises a specified corporate conflict of interest be made available for independent public review. 
• Bring transparency to the White House regulatory review process by requiring disclosure of changes to draft rules during that process and the source of those changes.
• Require agency officials to provide justification when the regulatory review process ends with a rule being withdrawn.  
• Establish financial penalties for corporate special interests that knowingly submit false information during the rulemaking process.