Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

14. Department of Health and Human Services · Notable

Rescind the OGC PREP Act liability memo

Not started

492 14. Department of Health and Human Services

“Rescind its PREP Act liability memo. OGC issued a PREP Act liability memo that suspended application of civil rights and other laws in the context of the administration of covered countermeasures during the pandemic. It should be rescinded as contrary to law.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    No rescission of the HHS Office of the General Counsel's PREP Act liability memorandum is on any allowlisted record, and the negative is now specific and dated rather than blocked. OGC's advisory-opinion index was read on 2026-09-03 (page reviewed 2026-08-25). It lists, in full: **Current** — 26-01, 25-01, 24-02; then, under a standing note that "These opinions represented the view of OGC during a prior Administration … They **do not, however, represent the views of the current Administration**" — 24-01 (marked "OGC is reconsidering this opinion"), and 21-02, 21-01, **20-06 WITHDRAWN**, 20-05, 20-04, 20-03, 20-02, 20-01. Six of those are PREP Act opinions (20-01 through 20-04, 21-01, 21-02); every one still carries a live link to its text, and the HHS Guidance Repository independently lists 20-03, 20-04 and 21-01 with Guidance Status "Final". So what happened is weaker than rescission and worth stating exactly: HHS appended a blanket disclaimer to the whole pre-2024 series while leaving the opinions posted, linked and listed as Final. **One caveat that cannot be resolved:** opinion 20-06 alone is marked WITHDRAWN, it is unlinked, and the withdrawal carries no date, so its subject cannot be read from the page — it should not be assumed either to be or not to be the memorandum this Quote names. The only in-window advisory opinion, 26-01 of 2026-08-25, is unrelated: it concerns the role of HHS-funded and HHS-regulated entities in nominating HHS officials for awards and honors.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Federal Register full text “PREP Act” since 2025-01-20: three documents - an Andes virus countermeasures declaration and two Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program information collections. None rescinds an OGC opinion.
  • The 2025-03-14 OGC Statement of Organization rescinds “all prior Statements of Organization” for OGC; it says nothing about the office’s advisory opinions or memoranda.
  • hhs.gov/guidance and hhs.gov/about/agencies/ogc/advisory-opinions/ can both be read, and both were read on 2026-09-03. The Guidance Repository’s title filter was tested — a nonsense term returns a table with zero rows — and returns five pages of documents for “PREP”.
  • HHS regulatory agenda, checked 2026-09-01. Checked against the full HHS agenda on reginfo.gov (183 active RINs in the 2026 Unified Agenda, published 2026-08-14), not the abbreviated version the Federal Register prints. The nearest entry is recorded here. It does not name this ask’s object, so the Status did not change: an agenda entry counts as an attempt only when it names what the ask asks for.
    • HRSA’s 0906-AB31 (Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program: COVID-19 Countermeasures Injury Table, NPRM 11/2026) is the agenda’s only PREP Act rulemaking. It builds the injury table out — it compensates under the Act rather than narrowing the liability reading — and the OGC liability memorandum is not a regulation, so no entry could rescind it. Nothing in the 183 does.
Action
rescind
Object
HHS OGC PREP Act liability memo
ID
1378