Today, Public Knowledge joined 21 other public interest, civil rights, labor, and digital rights groups in a letter urging Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr to pull an item from the agency’s July Open Meeting agenda for violating the Administrative Procedure Act. The groups express “grave concern” regarding “the adoption by the Commission of a procedure to permit the offices and bureaus to eliminate existing rules without traditional notice-and-comment rulemaking under the ‘good cause’ exception of the Administrative Procedure Act.” They argue that “the procedure the FCC would eliminate or relax critical safeguards proposed by the Administrative Conference of the United States to prevent abuse.” The letter asks Chairman Carr to withdraw the current draft of the item.
The following is an excerpt from the letter:
“[T]his [proposed Direct Final Rule] procedure would effectively eliminate any hope for timely judicial review of elimination of a rule on delegated authority – a result not intended by the Administrative Conference of the United States [that runs] contrary to the intent of the APA and principles of fundamental fairness.
“This item represents a delegation of authority well beyond anything contemplated by the Communications Act, and completely at odds with the importance of public comment emphasized by the APA and the Supreme Court. It undermines the structure of the Commission as an independent, bipartisan agency, and places unprecedented power in the hands of the Chair through the Chair’s control of the bureaus. It would permit the bureaus to select and eliminate rules through an accelerated process, without publication in the Federal Register. As a result, impacted parties will have little opportunity to advise the Bureau that supposedly ‘obsolete’ rules remain in use and necessary in the public interest.
“We therefore strongly urge that you pull the item from the agenda or, at a minimum, do not delegate authority to the bureaus to eliminate rules through Direct Final Rule. If you are determined to bring the matter to a vote, we ask that you modify the item to enable judicial review and to adopt the guardrails against abuse recommended by the ACUS.”
You may view the letter for more information.
Members of the media may contact Communications Director Shiva Stella with inquiries, interview requests, or to join the Public Knowledge press list at shiva@publicknowledge.org or 405-249-9435.