“To amend title 5, United States Code, to provide for certain rules relating to the payment of attorney's fees.”
No CRS summary available for this bill.
This section limits eligibility for attorney fee awards under the Equal Access to Justice Act to prevailing parties who have a direct and personal monetary interest in the adjudication or civil action, including because of personal injury, private property damage, or unpaid agency disbursement. It caps awards at $200,000 per proceeding and three proceedings per calendar year (with exceptions for class actions or cases involving the Social Security Administration or Department of Veterans Affairs), requires courts to reduce or deny awards commensurate with pro bono hours or when the prevailing party acted in an obdurate, dilatory, mendacious, oppressive, or bad-faith manner, and applies these changes to proceedings and actions commenced on or after the date of enactment.
This section prohibits settlement agreements or consent decrees involving a federal agency from including payments of attorneys’ fees or litigation costs when the agreement results in a regulation or guidance document. It defines a guidance document as any agency statement of general applicability that lacks the force of law and sets policy or interprets statutes or regulations, and it defines a regulation as any agency statement intended to have the force of law.
This section directs the Secretary of the Interior to assemble a 5-member independent scientific panel no later than 5 years after enactment to assess the Act's impacts on the ecological, social, and economic sustainability of federally managed lands, covering federal forest and rangeland health, susceptibility to catastrophic wildfire and insect infestation, biological diversity, watershed quality, and economic productivity. The panel reports its conclusions to the House Committee on Natural Resources and the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, with membership requiring at least two hunters or anglers, one affiliated with the forest products industry, one with a rural water utility, and one wildlife biologist.