Will President Trump Dismantle the Administrative State?
On February 19, 2025 President Trump issued Executive Order 14219 declaring that his administration would “commence the deconstruction of the overbearing and burdensome administrative state.” To ensure that agencies received his message the President issued his Directing the Repeal of Unlawful Regulations memorandum. This memo directed agencies to look at their regulations in light of ten recent supreme court cases, on the top of that list was Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Dep’t of Commerce,603 U.S. 369 (2024), signaling the President wants recent court cases, particularly Loper Bright, to be used to dismantle overbearing agency regulations. Other cases highlighted in the memo touch on other critical limits on administrative power, including West Virginia v. EPA (major questions doctrine), SEC v. Jarkesy (Seventh Amendment right to jury trial), and Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid (property rights).
But this memo only has weight if the agencies respond. Searching through the federal registry, a database that catalogs all changes to administrative regulations, there are seven changes from agencies that reference President Trump’s memo and an additional forty that reference Loper Bright. This number is small. But in the coming months the deregulation may increase dramatically as DOGE is working on an AI tool that could rapidly increase deregulation per the Washington Post. But even with a currently small number of responses from agencies, not all hope is lost if the agencies change the way they view rulemaking. The way that the agencies view Loper Bright exemplifies this.
Some agencies use Loper Bright in an active way acknowledging that there is now a “best reading” of a statute and a best interpretation. The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement has changed their analysis in this way saying “we propose to return to the language that was in the rule prior to the 2024 Rule and that better implements the best reading of [the statute].”
On July 2, the Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division proposed a rule that will lead to a repeal of a 2013 regulation. Their reasoning is that the 2013 regulation is not the best reading of the statute. Loper Bright is included in the analysis, but the Department shies away from relying on it for the repealing of the regulation. Instead saying, “The Department has thus far taken the position in litigation that the 2013 rule is still valid despite the 2024 Loper Bright decision, but is now taking a fresh look at arguments to the contrary.” This sentence discounts using Loper Bright in the process to change regulations. The agency recognizes that it exists but does not use it as a tool for agency change or self-deregulation.
There is a third way that agencies have taken to deregulation, simply getting rid of unlawful regulations. When the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) did this they mentioned the President’s memo but did not mention Loper Bright at all, not even a footnote. Instead, the agency declared that the regulation exceeded their statutory authority and therefore must be repealed.
These three different responses paint a broad possible future. If all agencies going forward take the first approach, where Loper Bright is the reason for the change of a regulation, then there is the possibility that administrative deregulationwill make a lasting impact. Even with a change in administration rules will stay in effect being bound by Loper Bright.
But, even when the President supports deregulation agencies appear slow to act and unwilling to cede power. With only seven agencies acknowledging the President’s memo directly it is unlikely it will bring large scale change, but there is hope that maybe the AI tool and more time could change this. But the agencies that acknowledge Loper Bright as the reason for the change could result in deregulation that lasts more than one administration. Now the rest of the agencies need to start following suit and realign their regulations with the “best reading” of the statutes they enforce.
August 22, 2025