The Justice Department wiped a wide swath of "guidance documents" off the books on Thursday, withdrawing 25 documents — including one addressing integration of people with disabilities in state and local government programs and another on standards for assessing citizenship status discrimination.

The Justice Department, in announcing the move, stated the 25 documents were "unnecessary, inconsistent with existing law, or otherwise improper." Several — though not all of them — were issued during President Barack Obama's administration.

The move follows a February executive order from President Donald Trump seeking a broad review of regulatory actions across the federal government and a follow-up November memo from Attorney General Jeff Sessions focused on guidance documents — which the department criticized as being used to "evad[e] required rulemaking processes" too often.

"[A]ny guidance that is outdated, used to circumvent the regulatory process, or that improperly goes beyond what is provided for in statutes or regulation should not be given effect," Sessions said in a statement on Thursday. "That is why today, we are ending 25 examples of improper or unnecessary guidance documents identified by our Regulatory Reform Task Force led by our Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand."



The Justice Department formally announced that Sessions was withdrawing the more than two dozen "guidance" documents following a Washington Post report on the decision earlier Thursday evening.

The department did not state why each of the 25 were specifically selected to be withdrawn.

Ten of the withdrawn documents relate to the Americans With Disabilities Act; six are documents issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the remaining nine cover a range of topics — including a 2016 Obama-era effort highlighted in the Post's reporting "that asked local courts across the country to be wary of slapping poor defendants with fines and fees to fill their jurisdictions’ coffers."

One of the withdrawn ADA documents addressed the application of the "integration mandate" in the part of the ADA addressing state and local governments. The chair of the US Commission on Civil Rights, Catherine Lhamon, criticized the move on Twitter.