A baby products manufacturer is challenging a new federal regulation as overly broad and contrary to President Donald Trump’s agenda of reigning in three-letter agencies and commissions.
New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) filed suit Thursday in Washington, D.C. against the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) over a new federal safety standard for infant support cushions. NCLA, on behalf of Heroes Technology, says the commission misinterprets the term ‘durable’ in the provision to include items not previously covered by the standard, like cushions and other such products.
NCLA argues that the CPSC previously only included items that fell squarely within the accepted definition of ‘durable’ as delineated by congressional statute – cribs, for example, as well as high chairs, swings and other products.
‘We think that this is a pure case of statutory construction that guides agency authority and over here they step their bounds,’ Kara Rollins, Litigation Counsel at NCLA, told Fox News Digital.
Rollins said that, via the provision in question, the commission is ‘shortcutting and bypassing really important procedural checks, evidentiary requirements in order to push out a regulation faster.’
NCLA had previously sent CPSC a letter requesting a stay of the rule, saying that it ‘establishes an arbitrary and ineffective safety standard.’ NCLA sought ‘postponement and reconsideration’ in light of one of Trump’s executive orders ordering all executive agencies and departments to halt issuing new rules and regulations pending review and approval.
‘The president has said to these agencies, ‘You must do X’, and it’s not clear that they’re actually following through with what’s required of them,’ Rollins said.
Rollins said that the rule not only affects Heroes Technology but also extends to ‘thousands of manufacturers [and] thousands of manufacturing jobs’ both in and outside the U.S.
‘It’s emblematic,’ Rollins said of the broader implications of the rule. ‘When an agency is not held to account, when it’s not held to the standards set out by the statute, or is independent and doesn’t answer to the president in its own mind, then these sorts of self-aggrandizements tend to occur.’
Rollins said that while the rule applies to a specific sector of businesses and products, ‘there’s not really anything that stops it from sort of infiltrating further unless there’s a check on their power.’
‘And one thing we’re very clear on is that it’s not that we don’t think our clients’ products can’t be regulated or shouldn’t be regulated, but how Congress said they should be regulated,’ Rollins said. ‘Congress said if you’re a durable infant good, everything else has to go through the process, and it’s our view that it should have went through the other process.’
Rollins and NCLA argue that infant cushions such as the ones in the case should undergo a separate process that ‘is more onerous, more rigorous, requires more data, more fact-finding.’
The suit comes as the Trump administration works to reel in the administrative state via executive orders, directives and legal challenges. In February, Trump signed one order in particular that requires federal agencies to evaluate all of their regulations that could violate the Constitution as the administration continues to prioritize slashing red tape.
The administrative state was previously dealt a blow by the Supreme Court in 2024 when it overturned the Chevron doctrine.
In the landmark decision, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Supreme Court effectively scaled back administrative power by holding that ‘Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority.’ The doctrine previously gave deference to an agency’s interpretation of a federal regulation.
Fox News Digital’s Diana Stancy contributed to this report.
