Supreme Court’s Loper Decision Threatens Net Neutrality and All Consumer Protections

Today, the United States Supreme Court announced its decision in the matter Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.The court annulled the long-termChevron doctrine” requiring courts to defer to an agency’s interpretation of the law. Instead, courts are now free to decide what meaning of the law they like, regardless of the expert agency’s interpretation. This decision prevents Congress from fixing the problem by amending the Administrative Procedures Act, arguing that the Constitution requires judges to make their own interpretation of the law without deferring to the agency (although judges can, if they wish, treat the agency’s interpretation as “guide”).

Harold Feld, senior vice president at Public Knowledge, can be credited with the following words:

“Today’s opinion is the latest in a series of opinions that Professor Mark Lemely has called the ‘Imperial Supreme Court’ – a court that seeks to elevate itself above the other two branches of government as the ultimate policy maker rather than an interpreter of the law. The opinion establishes for the first time the courts’ supremacy over the legislative and executive branches by holding that the Constitution requires judges to unilaterally decide the meaning of laws written by Congress and entrusted to agencies. It subverts not only Chevronbut also beforeChevron cases requiring the help of experts.

– Judge Gorsuch’s unnecessary statement coinciding with this Mark X, which, out of respect for the Federal Communications Commission, has designated broadband communications as a Title I information service, is secure, but that is not everyone reclassifying broadband internet as a Title II telecommunications service would not be entitled to such deference, the quiet part essentially says out loud: When agencies produce results that please the presiding judge, they stand. If they don’t, the judges simply overturn agency decisions based on judges’ preferences for different policies regardless of the lawGorsuch’s results-oriented statement is all the more astonishing because the FCC did exactly what the opinion requires it to do — apply an accepted interpretation of the law to the facts of 2024 and how those facts have changed since the FCC first addressed the issue in 2002.

“The question remains whether a majority of justices will share Gorsuch’s open contempt for their presumed rule of interpretation. But one thing is clear. From today, no consumer protection is safe. Even if Congress can write with such precision that a court cannot challenge its plain meaning, Congress will have to change the law everyone new technology and everyone change in business practice. Even in the best of times, Congress couldn’t keep up. Given the dysfunction of today’s Congress, we are at the mercy of the whims of the Imperial Court.

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