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Chapter 7 · Appendix D

How to Read a Regulation

A regulation is where a statute’s command gets specific. You read it much like a statute, with two differences: you start one step earlier, with the authority that lets the agency speak at all, and you finish by asking whether the codified text is the whole story, because the agency’s own explanation of its rule was never codified.

Before you read

The situation. Your client owns a small neighborhood restaurant in a building put up in the 1960s. A single six-inch step separates the sidewalk from the front door. A customer who uses a wheelchair has written to say she cannot get in, and has asked what the restaurant intends to do. Your client wants to know whether the law requires a change to a building that has stood this way for sixty years, and what happens if a ramp turns out to be impossible.

The source. The Department of Justice’s regulations implementing Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, 28 C.F.R. part 36. Congress wrote the statute; the agency wrote the rules that put it into practice.

C.F.R.
The Code of Federal Regulations: agency rules arranged by subject, the way a code arranges statutes. Title, then Part, then Section.
Federal Register
The daily government publication where a rule first appears, together with the agency’s explanation of it. The explanation is never codified, so it lives only here.
Authority note
The line citing the statute that empowers the agency. A rule can never reach further than the statute that authorized it.
Public accommodation
A private business open to the public that the ADA covers. The statute lists categories; the regulation defines the term.

How to engage with a regulation

    Regulations change often. Confirm you are reading the current version in the eCFR, check the List of CFR Sections Affected and the Federal Register for recent amendments, and run a citator for decisions interpreting the rule. Stopping at the codified text is the commonest regulatory research error.