For the second time this school year, Betsy DeVos got a judicial smack down for attempting to eliminate regulations from the prior administration. In September, it was over protections for student loan borrowers. Yesterday, it was over racial disparities in special education.
In both cases, DeVos’s justifications for reversing Obama-era regulations amounted to little more than “I’m in power now and I don’t like Obama’s regulations.” The dressed up justification has been that the Department needs to pause the regulations so that it can “study” the issues more.
The problem, the federal courts have told the Department, is that it cannot just scrap regulations because it doesn’t like them, particularly when those regulations have already gone through a rigorous process of notice, comment, study, and justification. Reversing existing regulations requires a showing that the existing regulations are wrong. That requires evidence and logic—something that does not seem to interest the current administration.