Browse regulations

New Mexico surface coal mining regulations under SMCRA establishing state-federal cooperative framework for permit review, enforcement, and reclamation operations on federal lands with specific procedural requirements and administrative procedures.

This regulation creates unnecessary federal-state bureaucracy and compliance costs for coal mining operations. The complex cooperative agreement between state and federal agencies results in regulatory duplication, increased administrative overhead, and barriers to entry for small operators. The unseen costs include distorted market incentives, reduced competition, and higher energy prices for consumers - all while achieving questionable environmental benefits that could be handled through property rights and common law.

Establishes a detailed point-based civil penalty system for surface coal mining violations, including mandatory penalties for certain violations, daily assessments for continuing violations, and extensive administrative procedures for assessment, conference, and appeal.

Delete. This federal penalty system violates Tenth Amendment federalism by regulating a traditionally state-controlled industry, imposes massive compliance costs that disproportionately burden small operators, inflates energy prices for consumers, and creates a complex bureaucratic regime prone to capture; state regulation and tort law can address environmental and safety concerns more efficiently.

Coal miners with pneumoconiosis can opt to work in areas with respirable dust ≤0.5 mg/m³ while retaining pay rate and future increases. Operators must monitor dust via certified personnel using approved continuous personal dust monitors, maintain detailed logs, and follow strict sampling/calibration protocols.

Deletion would sentence miners with irreversible black lung to further dust exposure, accelerating disability and increasing societal healthcare burdens. This rule achieves a health-protective outcome that private bargaining cannot reliably match: information asymmetry about cumulative dust damage, long latency of disease, and unequal bargaining power make it unlikely miners could individually negotiate safe accommodations. The regulation provides a clear, enforceable standard that directly limits exposure for those already harmed, avoiding the greater unseen costs of preventable suffering and premature death.

Regulation requires underground mine operators to ensure mine rescue capability through either establishing teams or arranging services. Mandates two rescue teams (5 members + 1 alternate each) available during operations, specific equipment, training, medical fitness, and notification procedures. Provides exemptions for small/remote mines and special conditions. Travel time limits apply.

Rescue capability in high-risk underground mining represents a legitimate government interest in protecting life where market failures could lead to under-provision. The costs of compliance are justified by the potential to save lives in emergencies where every minute counts. While burdensome, the prescriptive standards ensure reliability that voluntary arrangements might not achieve. The regulation includes sensible exemptions for small/remote operations, acknowledging the disproportionate burden.

Requires independent contractors at mines to obtain MSHA identification numbers and provide business information to both MSHA and mine operators. Establishes a contractor registry and record-keeping rules to facilitate enforcement of violations by contractors, not just mine operators.

Unnecessary federal registry imposes administrative costs on small contractors and expands bureaucratic power. Contractors can already be held liable through contract law, torts, and direct enforcement without a centralized ID system. Mine operators already maintain contractor information; MSHA can request it directly without creating a separate federal database. The regulation solves a non-existent problem while raising barriers to entry and creating another tool for regulatory overreach.

Establishes OSHA criteria and procedures for identifying, classifying, and regulating potential occupational carcinogens in workplaces, including scientific evaluation panels, priority lists, and exposure reduction requirements.

Creates a massive regulatory bureaucracy that imposes $2+ trillion in compliance costs, distorts labor markets, and protects incumbents through occupational licensing barriers. The 'scientific evaluation' process enables endless regulatory expansion without constitutional authority over workplace safety.

Federal employees must have safe workplaces; agencies develop safety programs; employees participate; inspections required; alternate standards allowed with employee consultation; posters required; retaliation prohibited.

Federal employees already covered by OSHA and labor laws; this creates redundant bureaucracy, compliance costs, and paperwork without improving safety beyond existing protections.

Establishes procedures for interagency coordination between the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and other federal agencies on equal employment opportunity issuances, requiring consultation and review to ensure consistency in policies, guidelines, and standards related to discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, or disability.

Creates bureaucratic overhead without adding substantive protections - equal employment opportunity enforcement already exists through existing agencies and civil rights laws. The coordination requirements delay implementation of necessary protections and create compliance costs for agencies that could be better spent on actual enforcement. Federal agencies should be able to develop their own equal employment policies without this layer of inter-agency consultation.

EEOC guidelines implementing Title VII's national origin discrimination prohibition with detailed enforcement standards covering disparate treatment and adverse impact, specific scrutiny of English-only rules, height/weight requirements, foreign education credentials, and harassment, establishing an affirmative duty for employers to maintain harassment-free workplaces and outlining vicarious liability standards.

Imposes substantial compliance costs and legal uncertainty, especially on small businesses, through subjective standards that chill legitimate employment practices. The presumption against English-only rules, close scrutiny of common hiring criteria, and affirmative harassment duty create over-cautious workforce management, discourage hiring of immigrant populations, and raise barriers to entry—protecting incumbents while violating freedom of contract. Enforcement bureaucracy and litigation risk distort market incentives and exceed constitutional federalism boundaries.

Regulation implements Title VII's requirement that employers reasonably accommodate employees' religious practices unless it causes 'undue hardship' (defined as more than de minimis cost). Requires accommodations like flexible scheduling, voluntary shift swaps, lateral transfers, and alternative charitable dues payments for labor organizations. Prohibits pre-hire availability inquiries that would screen out religious accommodation seekers unless justified by business necessity.

Americans would be worse off without this regulation because it protects the fundamental civil right to free exercise of religion in the workplace—a core liberty essential to human flourishing. Deletion would permit systematic exclusion of religious believers from employment opportunities, forcing them to choose between faith and livelihood. The regulation achieves its desired outcome through a balanced, workable framework that could not be replicated through state laws alone: it provides nationwide baseline protection while the 'undue hardship' standard ensures accommodations remain reasonably limited to avoid excessive business disruption. The compliance costs are minimal compared to the profound human cost of religious discrimination, and the regulation prevents the kind of majoritarian tyranny that would inevitably emerge without federal civil rights enforcement.

Establishes arbitration procedures under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) for resolving disputes between pesticide registrants and data submitters over compensation for test data use. The regulation sets up a framework using the American Arbitration Association with specific rules for compulsory and voluntary arbitration, including procedures for appointing arbitrators, conducting hearings, and rendering awards.

This regulation creates an unnecessary bureaucratic layer for pesticide data compensation disputes that could be handled through standard contract law or voluntary arbitration. The extensive procedural requirements add compliance costs without providing benefits that couldn't be achieved through existing legal mechanisms. Small businesses face disproportionate burdens from these complex arbitration rules, and the system has likely been captured by industry interests who understand how to manipulate the process. The regulation represents federal overreach into what should be private contractual matters between companies.

Regulation governing Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) procedures for providing mediation in federal labor negotiations, including notice requirements, grievance mediation guidelines, and impasse referral to the Federal Services Impasses Panel.

The regulation creates unnecessary federal bureaucracy for a service that private mediators can provide voluntarily; compliance costs (30-day notices, specific forms, procedural guidelines) impose administrative burdens on federal agencies and unions without justification, as market-based mediation would achieve the same outcomes at lower cost and without taxpayer funding.

Procedural rules for administrative proceedings under part 458, covering time computation for filings, document service methods, signature requirements, and liberal construction of regulations to effectuate CSRA/FSA purposes. Includes provisions for extending deadlines to avoid injustice.

These neutral procedural rules reduce uncertainty and litigation over process, especially benefiting small businesses and individuals who lack resources to navigate ambiguous administrative procedures. Deleting them would increase transaction costs, create unpredictability, and risk determinations on technicalities rather than merits. The rules merely set basic 'rules of the road' for fair administration.

This regulation implements the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) for federal employee unions under the Civil Service Reform Act and Foreign Service Act. It establishes comprehensive governance requirements including: member rights to vote, free speech, and due process; restrictions on dues increases requiring secret ballot votes; procedures for trusteeships over subordinate bodies; election standards; fiduciary duties and bonding requirements; anti-retaliation protections; and a detailed federal enforcement apparatus with investigation, complaint, hearing, and adjudication processes administered by the Department of Labor.

This 1850-page regulatory regime imposes massive compliance costs on voluntary associations while creating an unaccountable federal bureaucracy to police internal union affairs. The assumption that federal oversight is superior to member-driven accountability ignores that unions already face market discipline: members can withhold dues, form rival unions, or decertify. The regulation's one-size-fits-all procedures (e.g., mandatory bonding amounts, specific notice requirements, 4-month exhaustion timelines) prevent unions from adopting more efficient governance tailored to their members' preferences. The enforcement structure—with its investigations, administrative law judges, and review boards—expands bureaucratic power at taxpayer expense while doing nothing to improve union performance. These are private contractual relationships among consenting adults; the state's role should be limited to enforcing actual contracts and property rights, not micromanaging internal procedures. The unseen costs include: suppressed experimentation with alternative governance models, regulatory capture by incumbent union officials who game the rules to entrench themselves, and diversion of union resources from member services to compliance paperwork. If a union truly violated its members' rights, members retain all common-law remedies (tort, contract) and can vote out bad leadership. This entire apparatus violates the principle that laws should be general and knowable—here we have 1850 pages of special rules for a single category of private association.

Coordinates enforcement of FLSA, OSHA, and FLCRA for migrant farmworkers through national/regional committees, data collection, and annual plans.

Taxpayer-funded bureaucracy increases compliance costs for small farms, centralizes authority over state concerns, and creates a self-expanding enforcement apparatus with unintended consequences for agricultural employment.