On October 19, 2021, the US Department of Health and Human Services proposed repealing recent rules on Good Guidance Practices (GGP) and fairness in enforcement only a few months after the Department of Justice rescinded the 2018 Brand memo.
Commenting on the proposed GGP reversal, partner Scott Memmott said that it “reflects fundamentally different approaches to governing. On the one hand, in the old administration, they claimed to be focused on fairness and accountability and not allowing executive agencies to regulate through subregulatory guidance that they thought was unlawful. On the other hand, you have an administration more comfortable with a more robust regulatory approach, and they think these final rules from the very late days of the prior administration unnecessarily hamstrung them. It’s a philosophical divergence on the role of government.”