{"id":154873,"date":"2025-03-25T02:51:50","date_gmt":"2025-03-25T02:51:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/business\/legal\/the-cra-and-permits-legal-planet\/"},"modified":"2025-03-25T02:51:50","modified_gmt":"2025-03-25T02:51:50","slug":"the-cra-and-permits-legal-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=154873","title":{"rendered":"The CRA and permits &#8211; Legal Planet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<h3>The CRA and permits<\/h3>\n<h2 class=\"subtitle\">Applying the CRA to the California waivers might open the door to Congressional review of permits more broadly<\/h2>\n<p>This is the second in a series of blog posts examining the possible application of the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to California\u2019s waivers under the Clean Air Act allowing the state to issue its own emissions standards for motor vehicles.\u00a0 The first post is <a href=\"https:\/\/legal-planet.org\/2025\/03\/23\/what-is-the-scope-of-the-congressional-review-act\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The basic legal question at the heart of the dispute over whether California\u2019s Clean Air Act waivers are subject to the CRA are <a href=\"https:\/\/legal-planet.org\/2025\/02\/24\/congress-lacks-the-power-to-overturn-californias-car-waiver\/\">whether those waivers are \u201crules\u201d<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yalejreg.com\/nc\/the-congressional-review-act-and-the-california-emissions-waiver-a-deeper-dive-by-daniel-farber\/\">within the scope of the CRA<\/a>.\u00a0 The CRA only applies to agency actions that are \u201crules\u201d that are of \u201cgeneral applicability.\u201d\u00a0 In defining a rule, the CRA adopts the definition in the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which in 5 USC 551 defines a rule as<\/p>\n<p>\u201can\u00a0agency\u00a0statement of general or particular applicability and future effect designed to implement, interpret, or prescribe law or policy or describing the organization, procedure, or practice requirements of an\u00a0agency\u00a0and includes the approval or prescription for the future of rates, wages, corporate or financial structures or reorganizations thereof, prices, facilities, appliances, services or allowances therefor or of valuations, costs, or accounting, or practices bearing on any of the foregoing\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In contrast, an \u201corder\u201d under the APA is anything that is not a rule.\u00a0 This is not . . . the clearest way to define a rule versus an order under the APA.\u00a0 The confusion in part is that the APA definition or a rule is intended to cover decisions such as approvals of corporate mergers or ratemaking decisions.\u00a0 However, much of this is not relevant to the CRA, which in 5 USC 804 excludes \u201crules\u201d of \u201cparticular applicability\u201d including the ratemaking examples.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, the APA defines an order as including a license, which is in turn defined as \u201cthe whole or a part of an\u00a0agency\u00a0permit, certificate, approval, registration, charter, membership, statutory exemption or other form of permission.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The GAO has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gao.gov\/assets\/880\/875948.pdf\">twice<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gao.gov\/assets\/870\/863746.pdf\">considered<\/a> this issue, and in both cases has concluded that California\u2019s waivers are not rules.\u00a0 The reasoning is that the waivers are orders because they are case-specific factual determinations that apply to individual actors \u2013 in this case, California.\u00a0 In addition, GAO assessed that even if the waivers were rules, they were rules of \u201cparticular applicability\u201d and thus did not qualify under the CRA.<\/p>\n<p>What could be the implications if Congress ignored the GAO determination here, and still applied the CRA to these decisions?\u00a0 One possible implication is that, if Congress wants to apply the CRA to licenses and orders, it can do so, regardless of the text of the CRA, if Congress simply determines that a relevant decision qualifies.\u00a0 That has potentially sweeping implications for permitting under environmental (and many other statutes).\u00a0 For instance, could a Congress decide that an EPA was imposing permit standards that were too strict, or too lax, and use the CRA to void permits for individual facilities around the country?\u00a0 The result could be highly disruptive of permitting programs in ways that may be harmful to the environment, to regulated parties, or both.<\/p>\n<p>One possible counterargument is that the regulatory standards adopted by California can be applied by other states if they choose.\u00a0 This is perhaps the best argument for the waivers being \u201crules\u201d under the CRA, on the grounds that they are no longer decisions specific to California, and they are of general applicability.\u00a0 The largest problem with this argument is that the waiver analysis is specific to California, such that it looks more like an order or rule of particular applicability (this is the approach taken by GAO).\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yalejreg.com\/nc\/the-congressional-review-act-and-the-california-emissions-waiver-a-deeper-dive-by-daniel-farber\/\">As one of us has previously discussed more extensively<\/a>, consideration of collateral consequences is an inappropriate way to distinguish between orders and adjudications.<\/p>\n<p>If one were to consider the practical or collateral effects of an agency decision to determine whether it is a rule for CRA purposes (such as other states being able to adopt California standards), that still could produce a substantial expansion of the scope of the CRA in ways that may be destabilizing of a range of other regulatory and policy processes. It is not unusual for an order to a specific party to have effects on many others. \u00a0For instance, new drug approvals by the FDA presumably are orders or rules of specific applicability\u2013 but they have practical consequences for other actors, such as eventually allowing the production of generic drugs by other parties. Even the license for a TV or radio station could be considered a rule because of its collateral effect on other would-be broadcasters: it precludes anyone else from using that frequency in the area. Thus, the counterargument relying on collateral effects seems to sweep far too broadly, deviating substantially from the common understanding of the distinction.<\/p>\n<p><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings above via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings below via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons above via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons below via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"tags\"><i class=\"fa fa-tag\"\/> <a href=\"https:\/\/legal-planet.org\/tag\/california\/\" rel=\"tag\">California<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/legal-planet.org\/tag\/clean-air-act\/\" rel=\"tag\">Clean Air Act<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/legal-planet.org\/tag\/congressional-review-act\/\" rel=\"tag\">Congressional Review Act<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/legal-planet.org\/tag\/trump-administration\/\" rel=\"tag\">Trump Administration<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The CRA and permits Applying the CRA to the California waivers might open the door to Congressional review of permits more broadly This is the second in a series of blog posts examining the possible application of the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to California\u2019s waivers under the Clean Air Act allowing the state to issue [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":154874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[531,43235,64147,39332,6036,60938,5552,12903],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-154873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-legal","tag-california","tag-clean-air-act","tag-congressional-review-act","tag-cra","tag-legal","tag-permits","tag-planet","tag-trump-administration"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The CRA and permits - Legal Planet - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=154873\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The CRA and permits - Legal Planet - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The CRA and permits Applying the CRA to the California waivers might open the door to Congressional review of permits more broadly This is the second in a series of blog posts examining the possible application of the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to California\u2019s waivers under the Clean Air Act allowing the state to issue [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=154873\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-03-25T02:51:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/openGraphLogo.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"288\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"122\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=154873#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=154873\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/#\/schema\/person\/b85e3c3dc0e1daea076524dc8810c371\"},\"headline\":\"The CRA and permits &#8211; 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