Racial Equity and Regulatory Review

"On his first day in office, President Biden signed nine executive orders, beginning with a tone-setting declaration that federal agencies should advance racial equity and support underserved communities," according to an article by Daniel Kuehn.

Included in that series of executive orders was one directed toward the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to undo some of the actions of the Trump administration, especially regarding fair housing rules. A January Planetizen article documented that order.

Kuehn's article draws attention to some of the other equity work enabled by the Biden administration's first executive actions, namely, an executive order on federal regulation and a memorandum on modernizing regulatory review. These two documents, according to Kuehn, "reestablish sound principles of cost-benefit analysis in regulatory review and provide the tools to begin dismantling structural racism using the federal rulemaking process."

Kuehn explains how the regulatory review process works, also explaining how equity considerations might have changed decisions in the past administration before offering several prescriptions for delivering on the full potential of Biden's memo.