Agriculture sector hit by recent Supreme Court decision

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The deputy general counsel of the American Farm Bureau Federation says the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to no longer recognize the Chevron rule is starting to have an impact on the agriculture sector.

The doctrine, which has been in place for 40 years, requires courts to defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of unclear regulations. In late June, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to end the doctrine.

Travis Cushman tells Brownfield that “any regulation that the agency issues will have to be evaluated in terms of whether the agency actually has the authority to do it or whether it is making it up.”

He says a South Dakota farmer received a request this week for another hearing in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in a wetlands case.

“Mr. Foster is challenging NRCS’s responses to the wetlands findings and is making new findings. SCOTUS has referred the case back and essentially told the Eighth Circuit, hey, you need to reevaluate this case, you need to actually look at the statute and see whether Congress has given this agency the authority that it claims to have.”

Cushman said the recent Supreme Court decision is important in any case where federal agency regulations are challenged, such as in the Waters of the United States case.

“This has been passed down from administration to administration over the years. The EPA continues to seek more authority and claim that it has it,” he says. “That would be helpful in our case against the current WOTUS provision because we say, hey, judges, we can’t take the EPA at its word that they have this authority.”

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and wetlands determinations issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Services are recent examples where the Chevron Rule has given agencies the authority to interpret regulations affecting farmers.