Yes—I work for a federal agency and before any edict can be imposed on the public in my agency three things need to happen: 1) Congress needs to pass a law, then 2) regulations need to be written, and 3) before those regs are implemented, a period of “negotiated rulemaking” needs to occur during which the public and stakeholders can provide feedback. (I’ve attended these “neg reg” sessions.) Then finally—after months—the regulations are finalized and published in the Federal Register.
Skipping the third step violates the Administrative Procedures Act (and skipping the first step violates everything). This is what the federal judge concluded and she seems correct to me.
None of this happened with the CDC and masking.
Exactly so. Especially when the penalty directly impacts violators with substantial civil and/or criminal penalty. I would argue that such deprives those penalized of their due process rights.
I worked for a municipality I had to often tell co-workers that we did not just get to pull stuff out of our butts and “to go by the written.”