The Early Participation in Regulations Act of 2025 requires federal agencies to publish an advance notice of proposed rulemaking for major rules to increase transparency and public engagement.
James Lankford
Senator
OK
The Early Participation in Regulations Act of 2025 requires federal agencies to publish an advance notice of proposed rulemaking at least 90 days before introducing any "major rule" with significant economic impact. This mandate ensures the public has an early opportunity to provide data and feedback on the necessity and scope of potential regulations. The bill also establishes specific criteria for defining major rules and outlines limited exceptions where the advance notice requirement may be waived.
Early Participation in Regulations Act Mandates 90-Day Warning for Major Federal Rules Impacting the Economy
The Early Participation in Regulations Act of 2025 aims to pull back the curtain on how federal agencies create the big rules that affect our wallets and workplaces. Under this bill, if an agency wants to pass a "major rule"—defined as one with a $100 million annual economic impact or something that significantly jacks up prices for consumers—it can't just drop a proposal out of thin air. Instead, the agency must publish an "advance notice" in the Federal Register at least 90 days before the official proposal. This notice has to explain the problem they're trying to solve, the data they're using, and the different options they're considering, giving the public at least 30 days to weigh in before the pens hit the paper on the actual regulation.
A Heads-Up for Main Street
Think of this like a city council having to post a notice about a major new construction project three months before they actually break ground, rather than just showing up with bulldozers. For a small business owner or a local manufacturer, this 90-day window provides a crucial lead time to understand how new safety standards or environmental requirements might change their operating costs. By requiring agencies to share their legal authority and regulatory options early (SEC. 2), the bill tries to ensure that the people most affected by a $100 million rule aren't the last ones to find out about it. It’s about moving the conversation to the "drafting" phase rather than the "dealing with it" phase.
The Power of the Gatekeeper
While the goal is transparency, the bill puts a lot of trust in one person: the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). This individual gets to decide what counts as a "major rule" based on somewhat flexible terms like "significant effects" on competition or innovation. Even more notably, if the OIRA head decides that giving an advance notice isn't in the "public interest" or is "impracticable," they can skip the requirement entirely. The fine print here is important: these specific decisions to skip the notice cannot be challenged in court. This means if an agency fast-tracks a rule you think deserved a 90-day warning, you might not have any legal path to contest that shortcut.
Room for Mid-Course Corrections
One practical reality of this bill is that it gives agencies some breathing room to change their minds. SEC. 2 includes a provision that prevents courts from throwing out a final rule just because it looks different from the initial advance notice. For example, if an agency initially thinks a new tech regulation is the best way to protect consumer data but changes its approach after hearing public feedback, a court can't call that "arbitrary and capricious." While this allows for flexibility, it also means the "advance notice" might sometimes be a vague sketch of a problem rather than a concrete preview of the final burden. For busy professionals, the challenge will be deciding which of these early notices are worth their limited time to monitor and which might transform into something entirely different by the time they become law.