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This bill establishes public notice and comment procedures and motion to intervene standards for civil actions seeking to compel agency action and alleging that an agency is unlawfully withholding or unreasonably delaying an agency action, and for consent decrees or settlement agreements that require agency action, relating to a regulatory action that would affect the rights of: (1) private persons other than the person bringing the action; or (2) a state, local, or tribal government.
The bill sets forth requirements for:
agencies against which such an action is brought to publish online, within 15 days after receipt, the notice of intent to sue and the complaint;
Agencies seeking to enter such a consent decree or settlement agreement must:
publish, and accept and respond to public comment on, the proposed agreement or decree for 60 days before filing it with the court; and
The Department of Justice, or an agency litigating a matter independently, must certify to the court its approval of such proposed: (1) consent decrees that include terms that convert into a nondiscretionary duty a discretionary authority of an agency to propose, promulgate, revise, or amend regulations, commit an agency to expend funds that have not been appropriated and budgeted or to seek a particular appropriation or budget authorization, divest an agency of discretion committed to it by statute or the Constitution, or otherwise afford any relief that the court could not enter under its own authority; or (2) settlement agreements that include terms that provide a remedy for a failure by the agency to comply with the terms of the agreement other than the revival of the civil action resolved by the agreement, interfere with the authority of an agency to revise, amend, or issue rules, or commit the agency to expend funds that have not been appropriated and budgeted or to exercise in a particular way discretion which was committed to the agency by statute or the Constitution.
Courts: (1) shall not approve such consent decrees or settlement agreements unless they allow sufficient time and procedures to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act, rulemaking statutes, and executive orders; and (2) shall grant de novo review if an agency files a motion to modify such a decree or agreement on the basis that its terms are no longer fully in the public interest due to changed facts and circumstances or the agency's obligations to fulfill other duties.
Oct 25, 2017Each bar: ✓ Yea from the bottom, ✕ Nay aboveOct 25, 2017
House Oct 25, 2017 · the primary vote
Sunshine for Regulations and Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act
Passed
234 Yea 187 Nay 11 not voting
Party-line vote 2 of 421 voting members broke with their own party: 2 Democrats.
DemocratsRepublicansFilled: YeaRing: NayGrey: not voting or present
432 members on this roll call, from the official House record. Party majorities need at least five voting members, so an independent never counts as breaking with a party.
Signing on is not a vote: a member can cosponsor H.R. 469 and vote against it. 16 signed when it was filed.
Written by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, describing H.R. 469 as introduced in House on Jan 12, 2017. It is not the text of the measure; a later amendment may have changed what it does.
Organizations that named H.R. 469 in a lobbying disclosure. Only those that cited the bill by number appear, so this is a floor, not a full list.
72 disclosures name this measure. Retrieved from LDA.gov on 2026-10-05. Senate Office of Public Records cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from LDA.gov.