Guidance document
An agency statement explaining how it reads a rule, issued without notice and comment and formally binding on no one.
A guidance document tells the public how an agency interprets an existing requirement: a manual, a bulletin, a frequently-asked-questions page, a letter to industry. It is issued without the notice and comment sequence, does not appear in the Code of Federal Regulations, and creates no new legal obligation.
That description understates its practical force. Regulated parties follow guidance because it signals how the agency will exercise enforcement discretion, and an examiner or inspector applying it in the field is, from the outside, indistinguishable from an enforcer of law. This gap between formal status and practical effect is the enduring controversy about guidance.
The recurring legal question is whether a particular document is guidance at all or a legislative rule wearing the wrong label. If it in substance imposes a new requirement, a court can set it aside for having skipped the procedure the Administrative Procedure Act demanded. Coverage of guidance is therefore usually coverage of an argument about what the document really is.
What the federal government did, once a day.
One email each weekday: the rules, filings, votes and Fed decisions that actually changed something, each one linked to the document it came from.