The complaint also alleges that President Donald Trump's directive violates the Administrative Procedure Act by instructing agencies to act arbitrarily in canceling regulations in order to promulgate new ones. | Getty Trump faces suit over 2-for-1 executive order on regulations

Liberal groups have filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump in an attempt to block his executive order that mandates many federal agencies repeal two regulations for every new one they put on the books.

Public Citizen, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Communications Workers of America filed suit Wednesday morning in U.S. District Court in Washington, claiming that Trump exceeded his constitutional authority in issuing the order. The complaint also alleges that the president's directive violates the Administrative Procedure Act by instructing agencies to act arbitrarily in canceling regulations in order to promulgate new ones.


“No one thinking sensibly about how to set rules for health, safety, the environment and the economy would ever adopt the Trump Executive Order approach — unless their only goal was to confer enormous benefits on big business,” Public Citizen President Robert Weissman said in a statement. “By irrationally directing agencies to consider costs but not benefits of new rules, it would fundamentally change our government’s role from one of protecting the public to protecting corporate profits.”

Trump's order, issued last week, seemed certain to give fodder to those mounting legal challenges against specific deregulatory actions by his administration. However, the lawsuit mounts an across-the-board assault on the validity of Trump's instructions.

Among the order's specific provisions targeted in the new case is Trump's demand that new regulatory efforts in the current fiscal year have a net cost of zero, "unless otherwise required by law or consistent with advice provided in writing by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget."

"No governing statute authorizes an agency to base its actions on a decisionmaking criterion of zero net cost across multiple regulations," the suit says.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters Wednesday that the suit is without merit and overly speculative.

"The lawsuit specifically, is wildly inaccurate. It makes a ton of assumptions that call for speculation on what may or may not happen in the future,"Spicer said. "It's just subjective at best and doesn't have any basis in fact."

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the litigation.

The White House has said that Trump's order does not apply to the independent agencies and commissions responsible for much of the federal government's regulatory activity.

The case was assigned to Judge Gladys Kessler, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton.