Liberal groups sued President Trump on Wednesday over his “two-for-one” executive order issued last week that requires agencies to kill two existing regulations for every new rule they want to institute.
The environmental and advocacy groups — the Natural Resources Defense Council, Communication Workers of America and Public Citizen — argue that the Trump order is unconstitutional, “irrational” and seeks to scuttle programs meant to protect the public.
“President Trump’s order would deny Americans the basic protections they rightly expect,” said Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “New efforts to stop pollution don’t automatically make old ones unnecessary.”
Suh poked at Trump’s lack of seriousness in addressing policy, saying “when you make policy by tweet, it yields irrational rules.”
The coalition argued in its lawsuit that any reduction of federal regulations would be inherently harmful, especially if the goal was to prevent overall spending from rising.
“It will be harder to limit pollution, protect consumers, safeguard our food supply, guard against financial abuses or to take any other action to limit corporate actions that impose costs on the public,” the groups said in their complaint.
The deregulation order, also known as the regulation budget order, “imposes a false choice between clean air, clean water, safe food and other environmental safeguards.”
The executive order includes a section saying: “It is essential to manage the costs associated with the governmental imposition of private expenditures required to comply with federal regulations. Toward that end, it is important that for every one new regulation issued, at least two prior regulations be identified for elimination, and that the cost of planned regulations be prudently managed and controlled through a budgeting process.”
The groups filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington.
• Sean Higgins contributed to this report
