Antonin Scalia Law School prof Rao expected to lead White House regulation agency
Professor Neomi Rao/Courtesy George Mason University
Neomi Rao, a law professor and strong supporter of renaming the law school at George Mason University after the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, is expected to receive Senate approval Monday to lead the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
A former clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Rao is seen as having the skills necessary to work with progressives and conservatives, the New York Times reports.
The agency oversees regulation in areas including environmental protection, occupational and food safety, and health care. Eight former agency administrators support Rao’s nomination to a job seen as vital to President Donald Trump’s pledge to overhaul federal regulations.
“Objective evaluation of regulatory benefits and costs and open, transparent, and responsive regulatory procedures are essential to the development of effective public policy free from the undue influence of narrow interests,” reads a June 6 letter (PDF) the former administrators sent to Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, and Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. “We commend the nomination of Neomi Rao to fill the position of OIRA Administrator.”
Rao has said that the office’s principles have been consistent across presidential administrations, and recognition of that deserves “sustained applause,” Harvard Law School professor Cass R. Sunstein, who led the office during the Obama Administration, wrote for Bloomberg View. He was not one of the former administrators who signed the June 6 letter.
“OIRA’s staff members know that political officials, including the agency’s administrator and ultimately the president, are in charge. They follow orders (and they never leak). In that sense, they are unfailingly loyal to their bosses. But they also pride themselves on their concern for facts and the best scientific and economic thinking, and on their willingness to present fair counterarguments, even if they raise doubts about the views of the president himself,” Sunstein wrote. “… Instead of demonizing those who choose to work in the federal bureaucracy, we should be immensely grateful for their service. Neomi Rao appears to appreciate that point.”
Renaming the law school in 2016 for Scalia was tied to a $10 million donation from the conservative Charles Koch Foundation and seen as troublesome by some. However, according to the New York Times, Rao garnered support for the change from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, one of the court’s more progressive members. The foundation also donated to the law school’s Center for the Study of the Administration State, founded by Rao in 2015.
A 1995 graduate of Yale University, Rao graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1999, and was order of the coif, her CV (PDF) states. She also served as associate counsel and special assistant to President George W. Bush from April 2005 to June 2006, was counsel for nominations and constitutional law for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee from August 2000 to June 2001, and spent three years with Clifford Chance’s London office as an associate in its international arbitration group.
Rao also is a member of the governing council of the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice section and co-chairs its regulatory policy committee, according to her law school information page.
