Civil Monetary Penalties Inflation Adjustments for 2025

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE <CFR>28 CFR Part 85</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. OLP 178]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Civil Monetary Penalties Inflation Adjustments for 2025</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Department of Justice. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Department of Justice is adjusting for inflation the civil monetary penalties assessed or enforced by components of the Department, in accordance with the provisions of the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act of 1990, as amended, for penalties assessed after [INSERT DATE OF PUBLICATION IN THE <E T="04">FEDERAL REGISTER</E> ] with respect to violations occurring after November 2, 2015. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective July 3, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Robert Hinchman, Senior Counsel, Office of Legal Policy, U.S. Department of Justice, Room 4252 RFK Building, 950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20530, telephone (202) 514-8059 (not a toll-free number). </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Statutory Process for Implementing Annual Inflation Adjustments</HD> In accordance with the requirements of section 4 of the Federal Civil Monetary Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act of 1990, Public Law 101-410 (the “Inflation Adjustment Act”), as amended, (28 U.S.C. 2461 note) Justice is required periodically to adjust for inflation the civil monetary penalties assessed or enforced by the Department by publishing a rule in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . Section 701 of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, Public Law 114-74 (Nov. 2, 2015) (“BBA”), substantially revised the prior provisions of the Inflation Adjustment Act and substituted a different statutory formula for calculating inflation adjustments on an annual basis. The BBA further requires agencies to adjust their civil penalties on January 15 of each year thereafter to account for inflation during the preceding year. Pursuant to the Inflation Adjustment Act, as amended, the Department has promulgated a series of rules adjusting the civil money penalties for inflation. Readers may refer to the <E T="02">Supplementary Information</E> (also known as the preamble) of the Department's prior inflation adjustment rules for additional background information regarding the statutory authority for adjustments of civil monetary penalty amounts to take account of inflation and the Department's past implementation of inflation adjustments. Most recently, the Department published a final rule on February 12, 2024 (89 FR 9764), to adjust the civil money penalties to account for inflation occurring since 2023. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Inflation Adjustments Made by This Rule</HD> As required, the Department is publishing this final rule to adjust for 2025 the Department's current civil penalties. Under the statutory formula, the adjustments made by this rule are based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index for October 2024. M-25-02 (Dec. 17, 2024) <E T="03">https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/M-25-02.pdf</E> (last visited Dec. 26, 2024) instructs that the applicable inflation factor for this adjustment is 1.02598. Accordingly, this rule adjusts the civil penalty amounts in 28 CFR 85.5 by applying this inflation factor mechanically to each of the civil penalty amounts listed (rounded to the nearest dollar). <HD SOURCE="HD2">Example</HD> • In 2016, the Program Fraud Civil Remedies Act penalty was increased to $10,781 in accordance with the adjustment requirements of the BBA. • For 2017, where the applicable inflation factor was 1.01636, the existing penalty of $10,781 was multiplied by 1.01636 and revised to $10,957. • For 2024, where the applicable inflation factor was 1.03241 the existing penalty of $13,508 was multiplied by 1.03241 and revised to $13,946. • For this final rule in 2025, where the applicable inflation factor is 1.02598 the existing penalty of $13,946 is multiplied by 1.02598 and revised to $14,308. This rule adjusts for inflation civil monetary penalties within the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice for purposes of the Inflation Adjustment Act, as amended. Other agencies are responsible for the inflation adjustments of certain other civil monetary penalties that the Department's litigating components bring suit to collect. The reader should consult the regulations of those other agencies for inflation adjustments to those penalties. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Effective Date of Adjusted Civil Penalty Amounts</HD> Under this rule, the adjusted civil penalty amounts for 2025 are applicable only to civil penalties assessed after July 3, 2025, with respect to violations occurring after November 2, 2015, the date of enactment of the BBA. The penalty amounts set forth in the existing provisions of 28 CFR 85.5, and its accompanying table, are applicable to all covered civil penalties assessed after August 1, 2016, and on or before July 3, 2025, with respect to violations occurring after November 2, 2015. The revised table in this rule lists the civil penalty amounts as adjusted in 2025 and 2024. For civil penalty amounts as adjusted in years prior to 2024, readers should refer to the appropriate previously-published rule. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  81 FR 42491 (Jun. 30, 2016); 82 FR 9131 (Feb. 3, 2017); 83 FR 3944 (Jan. 29, 2018); 85 FR 37004 (Jun. 19, 2020); 86 FR 70740 (Dec. 13, 2021); 87 FR 27513 (May 9, 2022); 88 FR 5776 (Jan. 30, 2023); 89 FR 9764 (Feb. 12, 2024). </FTNT> Civil penalties for violations occurring on or before November 2, 2015, and assessments made on or before August 1, 2016, continue to be subject to the civil monetary penalty amounts set forth in the Department's regulations in 28 CFR parts 20, 22, 36, 68, 71, 76, and 85 as such regulations were in effect prior to August 1, 2016 (or as set forth by statute if the amount had not yet been adjusted by regulation prior to August 1, 2016). See 83 FR 3944. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Statutory and Regulatory Analyses</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Administrative Procedure Act</HD> The BBA provides that, for each annual adjustment made after the initial adjustments of civil penalties in 2016, the head of an agency shall adjust the civil monetary penalties each year notwithstanding 5 U.S.C. 553. Accordingly, this rule is being issued as a final rule without prior notice and public comment, and without a delayed effective date. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Regulatory Flexibility Act</HD> Only those entities that are determined to have violated Federal law and regulations would be affected by the increase in the civil penalty amounts made by this rule. A Regulatory Flexibility Act analysis is not required for this rule because publication of a notice of proposed rulemaking was not required. <E T="03">See</E> 5 U.S.C. 603(a). <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Executive Order 12866 (Regulatory Planning and Review), Executive Order 13563 (Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review), and Executive Order 14192 (Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation)</HD> This final rule has been drafted in accordance with Executive Order 12866, “Regulatory Planning and Review,” section 1(b), The Principles of Regulation, and in accordance with Executive Order 13563, “Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review,” section 1, General Principles of Regulation. The Department of Justice has determined that this rule is not a “significant regulatory action” under Executive Order 12866, “Regulatory Planning and Review,” section 3(f), and, accordingly, this rule has not been reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget. This final rule implements the BBA by making an across-the-board adjustment of the civil penalty amounts in 28 CFR 85.5 to account for inflation since the adoption of the Department's final rule published on January 30, 2023 (88 FR 5776). Further, as this rule is not a “significant regulatory action” pursuant to Executive Order 12866, it is not an “Executive Order 14192 action” and, accordingly, it is it is fully exempt from the numerical 10-for-1 and cost offset requirements of Executive Order 14192. <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. Executive Order 13132—Federalism</HD> This rule will not have substantial direct effects on the States, on the relationship between the National Government and the States, or on the distribution of power and responsibilities among the various levels of government. Therefore, in accordance with Executive Order 13132, it is determined that this rule does not have sufficient federalism implications to warrant the preparation of a Federalism Assessment. <HD SOURCE="HD2">E. Executive Order 12988—Civil Justice Reform</HD> This rule meets the applicable standards set forth in sections 3(a) and 3(b)(2) of Executive Order 12988. <HD SOURCE="HD2">F. Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995</HD> This rule will not result in the expenditure by State, local, and tribal governments, in the aggregate, or by the private sector, of $100 million or more in any one year (as adjusted for inflation), and it will not significantly or uniquely affect small governments. Therefore, no actions were deemed necessary under the provisions of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995. <HD SOURCE="HD2">G. Congressional Review Act</HD> This rule is not a major rule as defined by the Congressional Review Act, 5 U.S.C. 804. <LSTSUB> <HD SOURCE="HED">List of Subjects in 28 CFR Part 85</HD> Administrative practice and procedure, Penalties. </LSTSUB> Under rulemaking authority vested in the Attorney General in 5 U.S.C. 301; 28 U.S.C. 509, 510 and delegated to the Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Policy, by A.G. Order No. 5328-2022, and for the reasons set forth in the preamble, chapter I of title 28 of the Code of ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 31k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━