On March 25 and 26, 2021, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Delegate Michael F.Q. San Nicolas (D-Guam) introduced companion resolutions in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to block a rule made by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in November 2020.
The rule, published in the Federal Register on November 4, 2020, changed regulations governing who may submit shareholder proposals and increased the amount of support proposals would have to receive to be eligible for resubmission at future shareholder meetings.
The Congressional Review Act gives Congress a chance to review and reject any new regulatory rules created by federal administrative agencies. Both houses of Congress have to pass a resolution disapproving the SEC rule and President Biden would then have to sign that resolution into law to block the rule. Since the law’s creation in 1996, Congress has used the CRA to repeal 17 out of the over 90,767 rules published in the Federal Register during that time.
The SEC rule went into effect on January 4, 2021. A recent edition of the Congressional Record clarified that Congress has 60 days from February 3, 2021, to use the CRA to block regulatory activity taken near the end of the Trump administration. Rules published by the Trump administration after August 21, 2020 fall within the CRA lookback window.
To learn more about the Congressional Review Act and its use, see here: https://ballotpedia.org/Congressional_Review_Act
Want to go further? Sign up today for our Learning Journey on the Congressional Review Act: https://ballotpedia.org/Journey:_Congressional_Review_Act
Additional reading:
- Final Rule
- Rulemaking
- Midnight Rulemaking
- Administrative State
- Easter deadline to use Congressional Review Act to repeal end-of-term Trump administration regulatory activity (2021)
Link to the U.S. Senate CRA resolution:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-joint-resolution/16/text?r=1&s=5
Link to the U.S. House of Representatives CRA resolution:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-joint-resolution/36?s=5&r=1
Text of the SEC rule:
Link to the _Reuters_ article:
Link to the Congressional Record:
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-2021-02-03/pdf/CREC-2021-02-03-house.pdf