Supreme Court Chevron Ruling: What It Means for the Supreme Court to Reject Chevron’s Ruling That Challenged Federal Regulators

WASHINGTON — Executive branch agencies will likely have more difficulty regulating the environment, public health, workplace safety and other issues under the Supreme Court’s far-reaching decision.

The court’s 6-3 ruling Friday overturned a 1984 decision, commonly known as Chevron, that directed lower courts to defer to federal agencies when regulations passed by Congress were not crystal clear.

The 40-year-old decision has been the basis for upholding thousands of regulations by dozens of federal agencies, but it has long been a target of conservatives and business groups who say it grants too much power to the executive branch, or — as some critics say — call in the administrative state.

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The Biden administration has defended the law, warning that repealing the so-called Chevron rule would be destabilizing and could cause “convulsive shock” to the country’s legal system.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court, said federal judges “must exercise independent judgment in deciding whether an agency acted within its statutory authority.”

The ruling does not call into question earlier cases that relied on the Chevron doctrine, Roberts wrote.

Here’s a look at the court’s decision and its implications for future government regulation.

What is Chevron’s decision?

Atlantic herring fishermen are suing them over federal regulations requiring them to pay independent observers to monitor the catch. The fishermen argued that the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 did not authorize officials to create industry-funded monitoring requirements and that the National Marine Fisheries Service failed to follow proper rulemaking procedure.

In two related cases, fishermen asked the court to overturn the 40-year-old Chevron Doctrine, which stems from a unanimous Supreme Court case involving the energy giant in a dispute over the Clean Air Act. That ruling said judges should defer to the executive branch when laws passed by Congress are ambiguous.

In this case, the court upheld the complaint of the Environmental Protection Agency under then-President Ronald Reagan.

In the decades after the ruling, the Chevron ruling formed the basis of modern administrative law, requiring judges to defer to agencies’ rational interpretations of Congressional statutes.

But the current high court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, is increasingly skeptical of the powers of federal agencies. Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch questioned Chevron’s decision. Ironically, it was Gorsuch’s mother, former EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch, who made the decision that the Supreme Court upheld in 1984.

What’s at stake?

With a closely divided Congress, presidential administrations are increasingly turning to federal regulations to implement policy changes. Federal regulations affect virtually every aspect of daily life, from the food we eat and the cars we drive, to the air we breathe and the homes in which we live.

For example, President Joe Biden’s administration has released a series of new regulations on environmental protection and other priorities, including restrictions on emissions from power plants and vehicle tailpipes, as well as rules on student loan forgiveness, overtime pay and affordable housing.

These and other actions could be vulnerable to legal challenges if judges are allowed to discount or disregard the expertise of the executive branch agencies that implemented them.

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With potentially billions of dollars at stake, groups representing the defense industry and other businesses such as tobacco, agriculture, timber and construction are among those pressing the justices to overturn the Chevron Doctrine and weaken government regulations.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce filed a friend-of-the-court brief last year on behalf of business groups arguing that the modern use of the Chevron Act “promotes growth” of the executive branch at the expense of Congress and the courts.

David Doniger, a lawyer and longtime Natural Resources Defense Council official who argued the original Chevron case in 1984, said he feared a ruling striking down the doctrine could “free up judges to be radical activists” who could “effectively rewrite our rights and block the protection they are supposed to provide.”

“The end result will be a weakening of our government’s ability to deal with the real problems the world faces us — big ones like COVID and climate change,” Doniger said.

More than just fish

“This case was never just about the fish,” said Meredith Moore of the environmental group Ocean Conservancy. Instead, companies and other interest groups have used the herring fishery “to attack the foundations of the public agencies that serve the American public and protect our natural resources.” resources,” she said.

Moore and other advocates say the court ruling will likely open the door to lawsuits that could undermine critical protections for people and the environment.

“For more than 30 years, fisheries observers have been instrumental in helping to ensure that our oceans are managed responsibly so that fishing can continue into the future,” said Dustin Cranor of Oceana, another environmental group.

He called the case “the latest example of the far right trying to undermine the federal government’s ability to protect our oceans, waters, public lands, clean air and health.”

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey called the decision an appropriate follow-up to a 2022 decision — in a case he brought — that limits the EPA’s ability to control greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The court ruled that Congress must speak specifically if it wants to give the agency the authority to regulate issues of major national importance.

Morrisey, now the GOP candidate for governor, called Chevron “a flawed doctrine in which courts delay legally questionable interpretations of statutes provided by federal administrative agencies.”

Shift towards judicial power

The Supreme Court’s ruling will almost certainly shift power from the executive branch and Congress to the courts, said Craig Green, a professor at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law.

“Federal judges will now have the first and last word on what the laws mean,” he said. “That’s a big shift in power.

In what some observers see as historical irony, many of the conservatives now attacking Chevron once celebrated it. The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was among those who praised the original ruling as a way to curtail liberal rights.

“Conservatives believed in this principle until they didn’t,” Green said in an interview.

In recent years, conservatives have focused on “deconstructing the administrative state,” even if the result would be to diminish a conservative president’s ability to impose his beliefs on government agencies.

“If you weaken the federal government, you get less government,” Green said. It’s a result that pleases many conservatives, including those who support former President Donald Trump.

The ruling is likely to “make it harder for federal agencies to do their jobs and harder for them to solve big problems. And that’s exactly what Chevron’s critics want,” said Jody Freeman, director of the environmental and energy law program at Harvard Law School.