80 Groups Tell Congress to Reject Lawless Use of the CRA

For Immediate Release: March 31, 2025
Contact: David Rosen, drosen@citizen.org

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congress is seeking to violate the Congressional Review Act (CRA) by overturning policies that are ineligible to be targeted under the law, the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards warned lawmakers in a letter sent today.

The coalition and 80 groups called on Congress to reject the unprecedented and improper use of a CRA resolution to repeal a waiver issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) during the previous administration to the state of California. These waivers allow California to set protective pollution standards for certain vehicles under the Clean Air Act.

The neutral arbiter in disputes over the meaning of the CRA, the Government Accountability Office, has already twice determined that California’s waiver is not a “rule,” and is thus ineligible to be targeted using the CRA’s expedited process. If Congress proceeds, the result would be a new and entirely lawless carveout in the Senate’s filibuster rules.

“Congress has a choice: it can either choose to follow the intent and plain language of the CRA as it has done since the law was passed, or it can take the unprecedented step of using the CRA on an agency action that is simply not subject to the law, which will stretch the CRA beyond its breaking point and inevitably lead to future attempts to abuse the law. And if Congress refuses to follow the CRA’s rules, then perhaps it should consider repealing the law altogether. Until that happens, however, we urge you to follow the CRA’s clear rules defining the scope of its applicability,” the letter reads.

According to its defenders, the CRA was enacted to give Congress the ability to bypass the Senate filibuster to repeal recently issued rules. But to access those expedited procedures, each CRA resolution must meet the law’s explicitly defined criteria that Congress and the White House agreed to when they enacted it. Flouting those criteria would open a “Pandora’s Box” of potential abuses.

The CRA allows Congress by simple majority vote in both chambers with limited debate, no possibility of a filibuster, and with the president’s signature, to overturn recently issued regulations. The agency that issued the rule is then prohibited from issuing a new one that is “substantially the same,” but the scope of this prohibition has never been tested in court. Importantly, the CRA includes a carryover period allowing a new Congress to strike down rules issued in the final months of the previous administration. The Coalition for Sensible Safeguards maintains a tracker of CRA resolutions, updated weekdays.