I’ve written before about the Federalist Society’s Regulatory Transparency Project (RTP), but this is a good week to do so again, because it’s time for the former’s annual convention and, since the meeting’s theme this year is “Administrative Agencies and the Regulatory State,” much work of the latter will be showcased directly or indirectly.
The basic idea of the RTP, which began about a year-and-a-half ago, is to foster a nationwide conversation about areas where the costs of regulation exceed any benefits. The RTP consists of twelve working groups — Antitrust & Consumer Protection, Cyber & Privacy, Energy & Environment, Enforcement & Agency Coercion, FDA & Healthcare, Financial Services & Corporate Governance, Intellectual Property, Emerging Technology, Labor & Employment, Race & Sex, Regulatory Process, and State & Local — with an impressive array of scholars, professors, lawyers, and professionals who analyze how specific regulations can stifle innovation, impede opportunity, and harm the very people they were designed to help. To this end the RTP publishes white papers, posts podcasts, records videos, hosts teleforums, and holds events across the country to explore the strengths and shortcomings of government regulations and policies. Input from the public is eagerly sought.
Just to give you the flavor: Earlier in the year the RTP released a paper prepared by its “Race & Sex Working Group” (love that name, and I’m proud to be a member of it). The paper critiqued three areas of Obama-administration overreach by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights: transgender bathroom and locker-room access under Title IX; investigations by universities of sexual-assault and harassment claims, also under Title IX; and requirements that school-discipline policies not have a “disparate impact” on the basis of race, under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Here are links to the project’s homepage and an introductory video. Its work is worth following.