How Advocates Can Use the Revised Circular A-4 Means to Push for Stronger Worker and Environmental Protections

Abstract

For public interest advocates engaged on issues of worker health and safety and environmental protections, regulatory cost–benefit analysis has long been seen as an obstacle to meaningful progress. In November 2023, the Biden administration overhauled Circular A-4, which provides guidance to agencies on how to perform cost–benefit analyses for their rules. The reforms seek to make cost–benefit analysis less biased against worker safety, public health, environmental, and other protective safeguards. As such, the new version of Circular A-4 offers important new levers to agencies to justify more stringent protections. By extension, those in the public interest community can use agency implementation of the new Circular A-4 as part of their advocacy efforts for specific rules they are tracking. This article seeks to support this tactic by providing a roadmap for advocates on how to incorporate into their comments critiques of agencies’ cost–benefit analyses based on the Circular A-4 revisions.