Language restricting judicial review has been included by conservative legislators in 28 House and Senate bills this Congress (at least 13 of which explicitly involve environmental issues).

As reported in E&E Daily, bills to reform the judicial system or restrict judicial review of agency actions are hardly a new phenomenon in Congress: several of the bills proposing changes in the broader legal system passed the House mostly along party lines during the Obama administration but stalled in the Senate and never made it to the president’s desk.

Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) has led the effort on the House side. According to Reilly, since the beginning of 2017 his committee has approved at least 10 pieces of litigation under a judicial reform agenda, including bills that would:

• impose mandatory sanctions on attorneys who file “baseless” lawsuits;
• set restrictions on groups of people who can file class-action lawsuits;
• bar settlement dollars from going to third parties;
• move certain cases against corporations from state to federal courts; and
• “counter” ‘sue and settle’  — through which, GOP critics say, special interests sue friendly agencies in order to force them to issue new regulations.

In January, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) introduced a companion bill to the House’s sue-and-settle legislation.

Read here for more specifics about the bills.