Despite the majority’s insistence on umpire-like modesty, a motion to overrule came, and so power was seized. Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council This is a further strengthening of judicial powers over a judicial branch with equal powers.
And the arrogance has doubled, as the Court has once again seized power, ignoring the restraint required by the principle of binding precedent. The rule is that courts should be reluctant to lightly set aside precedents, which in this case have been the basis of administrative law since 1984.
Administrative law is not as emotive as abortion rights or LGBTQ+ rights, but the day-to-day impact of these seemingly arcane issues is enormous. The fundamental question in Friday’s decision boils down to “who decides”: the courts or government agencies. The conservative majority’s answer is “the courts,” which affects everything from clean air to drug safety to student loans to broad areas of government regulation. And with Trump, who appointed 28% of federal judges by the time he leaves office, likely to appoint even more in his second term, that power is more important than ever.
Legal advocates are hostile to the administrative state, and business communities are unhappy with what they see as overregulation. Chevron Despite initial victories for them and support from conservative jurists such as Justice Antonin Scalia, they continued to voice their opposition for years.
in Chevron, An environmental group challenged clean air regulations issued by the Reagan Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency. The Court rejected the group’s arguments and set out a two-part test that courts should follow when reviewing federal agency actions: First, is the underlying law the agency is applying ambiguous? Second, if it is ambiguous, is the agency’s interpretation “permissible”? If so, judges should follow agency interpretations of the law they administer, even if they did not reach that view independently.
This was a wise sharing of powers arrangement. All laws providing regulatory powers contain gaps and ambiguities. Executive branches are best placed to interpret the laws they follow and to address the myriad complex, technical questions that inevitably arise. Courts, on the other hand, are not supposed to be policy makers, nor are they best placed to render such expert judgments.
Now, the Court is again in control as a group of Atlantic herring fishermen challenged regulations that would have required them to pay for government observers on their fishing boats. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in the majority opinion: Chevron Courts have been unfairly forced to abandon the basic task of understanding the best meaning of the law at issue and instead blindly follow bureaucrats.
“Chevron “It does not prevent judges from making policy,” Roberts wrote. “It prevents judges from making decisions.”
He called the 1984 decision “a judicial invention that allows judges to ignore their statutory obligations” and said the ruling was binding. The Court did not need to stick to a “fundamentally erroneous” ruling that had proven “unworkable” in practice, had had to be repeatedly scaled back, and had not even been relied upon since 2016.
Justice Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, read a dissent from the court in which she accused the majority of continuing its quest to appropriate for itself the powers Congress has given the executive branch. The dissent cited recent decisions that have overturned the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s vaccination mandate, the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas emissions regulations and the Department of Education’s loan forgiveness program.
“But that was clearly too piecemeal for this Court,” Kagan wrote. “Today, in one fell swoop, the majority has bestowed itself sole authority over every unsettled question about the meaning of regulatory law, even questions of technical expertise and policy. As if that weren’t enough to do, the majority has made itself an administrative czar of the nation.”
Arrogance is piled on top of arrogance, Kagan said. Chevron The decision became a laughing stock in precedential law, especially because, unlike cases involving constitutional interpretation, for the next 40 years Congress was free to overturn it if it disagreed with it.
The majority’s “justification, ultimately, is that the Court should have more of a say in regulation — about the delivery of health care, the protection of the environment, the safety of consumer products, the effectiveness of our transportation systems,” Kagan wrote. “The majority despises restraint and seeks to seize power.”
What happens now? U.S. Attorney General Elizabeth B. Preloger said she could not overturn the ruling. Chevron, The decision, which has been cited in more than 17,000 lower court cases, “will send a huge shockwave through the judicial system.”
To get around some of that, Roberts said, “We Chevron The court itself has already Chevron And was largely ignored It may limit some of the damage, and courts may continue to defer to agencies’ expertise, especially in highly technical cases.
nevertheless, Chevron Without a principle of deference, it is easy to imagine conservative litigants and businesses rushing to friendly jurisdictions to challenge agency actions. Under a Republican administration, the opposite could happen. Without a uniform requirement of deference, different courts could reach different conclusions, leading to a proliferation of conflicting decisions.
But to eliminate Chevron It was on the conservative majority’s to-do list, and it was done.
