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119-s-60119th Congress

Write the Laws Act

Sponsored By: Senator Paul, Rand [R-KY]

Introduced

Summary

Preventing Congress from delegating its lawmaking power. This bill would bar Congress from assigning legislative authority to the President, agencies, courts, states, or private entities and create a legal framework to void noncompliant laws, rules, and decisions.

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  • Members of Congress would have to write laws that fully define criminal and civil offenses and non-criminal rules instead of leaving key policy choices to agencies.
  • Federal agencies and the President would face a strict limit on rulemaking and directives; any rule, directive, or adjudicative decision that does not meet the bill's nondelegation standard would have no force or effect 90 days after enactment.
  • The Comptroller General would report within 6 months identifying preexisting statutes that contain prohibited delegations, and private parties could bring civil suits seeking injunctive relief against enforcement with de novo judicial review.

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Bill Overview

Analyzed Economic Effects

5 provisions identified: 0 benefits, 0 costs, 5 mixed.

Anyone can sue over bad delegations

If enacted, any person 'aggrieved' by an Executive action taken under a statute that fails the nondelegation test would be able to sue the United States under the Declaratory Judgment Act. Plaintiffs could seek injunctions and other relief. Courts would review these suits de novo.

Applies only to future actions

If enacted, the rule would apply only to laws, presidential directives, adjudicative decisions, rules, or changes made 90 days after the chapter is enacted. It would not affect instruments made before that 90-day date. This could create a period of uncertainty as Congress and agencies review older delegations.

Ban on delegating lawmaking power

If enacted, the bill would bar Congress from giving lawmaking power to the President, agencies, courts, States, quasi-public bodies, or private parties. It would count creating or clarifying crimes, civil offenses, or non-criminal rules as lawmaking unless the rule is fully and completely defined in a statute. The Executive could still make factual findings about when a statute starts. It would exclude presidential proclamations, internal agency operation rules, and grant or contract conditions from the ban.

Noncompliant rules have no force

If enacted, any Act, presidential directive, adjudicative decision, rule, or regulation that fails the bill's nondelegation test would have no force or effect. No legal, equitable, regulatory, civil, or criminal action could be brought under such noncompliant instruments. Rules that regulate only federal officers or employees would not be subject to the authorization requirement.

GAO must list old delegations

If enacted, the Comptroller General (GAO) would have 6 months to send Congress a report. The report must identify statutes enacted before the 90-day cutoff that contain delegations the new chapter would prohibit. The report would only catalog those statutes and would not itself change the law.

Sponsors & CoSponsors

Sponsor

Paul, Rand [R-KY]

KY • R

Cosponsors

There are no cosponsors for this bill.

Roll Call Votes

No roll call votes available for this bill.

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