Administrative Procedure Act APA

The New Deal created dozens of agencies with broad powers and few common procedures, and critics charged they acted as prosecutor, judge, and jury. After a decade of debate, Congress passed the Administrative Procedure Act unanimously, and Harry Truman signed it on June 11, 1946. Its sponsor, Senator Pat McCarran, described it as a bill of rights for people whose affairs are regulated by federal agencies. It is sometimes called the constitution of the administrative state.

The APA sets two main ways agencies act. Rulemaking produces regulations of general effect, usually through notice and comment, publication of a proposed rule, public comment, and a final rule with explanation. Adjudication decides individual cases, such as licenses or benefit claims, and when a statute requires a formal hearing, it is conducted by an administrative law judge with trial-like protections. The act also requires agencies to publish their organization and rules, and the Freedom of Information Act was later added as an amendment to it.

Its judicial review provisions let people harmed by agency action sue, and direct courts to set aside actions that are arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law, that exceed statutory authority, or that skip required procedures. In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo in 2024 the Supreme Court read the APA's instruction that courts decide all relevant questions of law as requiring judges to interpret statutes independently, ending decades of deference to agencies under Chevron.