Weekly Review | Regulatory Review

IN NEWS

• The United States Supreme Court has overturned a 40-year-old decision Chevron vs. Natural Resources Defense Councilwhich required federal judges to defer to administrative agencies when interpreting ambiguous laws passed by Congress. Chevron often used when an agency had a legal dispute with a person, company, or state government. Writing for the majority in a 6-3 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. RaimondoSupreme Court Justice John G. Roberts said that “courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency acted within its statutory authority.” Supreme Court Justice Roberts’ opinion for the Court stated that previous decisions based on Chevron are still legal and challenging them would require “special justification.” But Justice Elena Kagan argued in a separate opinion that courts “can always come up with what we will call ‘special justification.’” Some legal experts say the decision will limit the agency’s effectiveness, including in regulating the environment, public health and workplace safety.
• The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that U.S. presidents are entitled to immunity from federal prosecution for official actions taken in office. The 6-3 decision overturns a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia against former President Donald Trump. Criminal charges alleging that the former president tried to maintain power after the 2020 election have been transferred to a federal trial court, which will decide them using new Supreme Court guidelines. Justice Sotomayer wrote a devastating dissenting opinion, saying that the president is “a king above the law.” While former President Trump celebrated the decision as “a major victory for our Constitution and democracy,” President Biden roundly condemned the decision as undermining “long-established principles of law.”
• The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that bans on sleeping outdoors do not violate the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In a 6-3 decision, the Court rejected the plaintiffs’ claim that criminalizing sleeping outdoors is tantamount to criminalizing someone based on their status, which was prohibited under the Eighth Amendment in a 1962 decision. Robinson v. CaliforniaJustice Neil Gorsuch wrote that such orders do not criminalize homelessness because “it makes no difference whether the defendant defendant is homeless, a vacationing tourist passing through town, or a college student leaving his dorm room to camp in protest.” In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown-Jackson, argued that sleeping outside is the only option for some people and that punishing homelessness with imprisonment or fines is a “cruel and unusual” punishment for homelessness.
• The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the six-year statute of limitations for claims brought under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) begins when “the plaintiff is injured by a final agency action,” not when the agency action becomes final. With that decision, the Court reinstated a North Dakota grocery store’s challenge to a rule of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System regarding debit card swipe fees, reversing lower court rulings that had dismissed the claim as time-barred. The Court’s broader interpretation of the APA’s statute of limitations could increase the number of challenges to federal regulations in the future.
• The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed Moyle v. United Statescase that would have answered the question of whether Idaho emergency room doctors can perform abortions as a medical stabilization measure. The split decision to dismiss the case hinged on the concurrence of Justice Barrett, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh, who emphasized that it is difficult to find a true conflict of law because of the numerous changes in federal law since the litigation began. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) mandates that hospitals receiving Medicare funding provide emergency care, including abortions, which is consistent with Idaho’s maternal life exception to its strict abortion laws. There was previously a perceived conflict between the language of the federal law that defined mental health concerns as a legitimate reason for performing an emergency abortion, but that language has since been changed, so the Idaho and federal requirements now appear to align.
• The U.S. Supreme Court has dismissed a case challenging the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) authority to regulate workplace safety. The plaintiff, an Ohio contractor, argued that OSHA’s broad regulatory authority violated the constitutional principle of separation of powers. In declining to hear the case, the court left in place lower court rulings that upheld OSHA’s authority to enforce safety regulations intended to protect workers.
• The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the obstruction statute that previously applied to the prosecution of January 6 rioters is narrower than previously thought. The court ruled, using mostly textual analysis, that relying on the word “otherwise” in the statute to prosecute rioters was improper. The majority emphasized that the enumerated obstruction measures, such as destroying or altering documents, should be considered a complete set of potential charges, not examples of a more general application. The decision will make it more difficult to prosecute some January 6 rioters under the statute, but Attorney General Merrick Garland noted that the narrowing will have no effect on the “vast majority” of cases involving January 6.
• The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the U.S. Treasury have finalized new regulations on reporting requirements for digital asset brokers, such as those that maintain cryptocurrency platforms. Starting in 2026, brokers will be required to report gross revenue from sales of digital assets. By 2027, they must also provide details about the tax basis for individual digital assets. The Treasury said that while digital asset owners have always been required to pay taxes on their sales, the new regulations will ensure that owners “get the information they need from brokers to file their taxes more accurately, easily, and cheaply.”

WHAT WE’RE READING THIS WEEK

• In a recent National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, Ronan C. Lyons, an assistant professor of economics at Trinity College Dublin, and several coauthors created “the first consistent data series on market rents and home sale prices” for 30 American cities from 1890 to 2006, identifying several unknown facts about housing markets during that period. The data series includes “rental prices, sale prices, capital gains, rental returns, total home returns, and rent-to-price ratios for cities and the United States as a whole,” as well as an alternative consumer price index using data from the Historical Housing Prices Project. Lyons’ team found that real home sale prices rose more from 1965 to 1995 than previously thought. Lyons and his coauthors also noted that real rental price levels rose by about 20 percent during that period. Lyons’ team suggested that housing price increases were uneven across cities, in part because of varying regulatory constraints, such as the use of restrictive zoning rules.
• In the article in Yale Law JournalAlison Gocke, an assistant professor of law at the University of Virginia, has argued that state utility commissions have significant, if often overlooked, potential to mitigate climate change by breaking down the “traditional divide” between energy and environmental regulation. Gocke examined New York’s mid-20th-century transition from coal to natural gas, coordinated by the New York Public Service Commission, to illustrate how utility regulation can achieve environmental goals. She concluded that the reluctance of modern utility commissions to engage in the clean-energy transition stems from “structural and political dynamics” rather than legal constraints.
• In a recent essay in Duke Law & Technology MagazineMaura R. Grossman, a research professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo and an associate professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, and co-authors Paul W. Grimm, Daniel G. Brown, and Molly (Yiming) Xu, discussed the implications of generative AI for litigation. The authors emphasized that the rapid development of AI and its current and expected skill levels could both generate lawsuits and require new procedures. The authors say there are potential new rules of evidence, expert witness costs, and changes to substantive law as courts try to adapt to the impact of AI in the courtroom. The authors emphasized that AI could have both positive and negative implications for the courtroom. They speculated that if AI becomes widespread in the legal market, more clients would be able to file proper pleadings and justice could be more easily administered, but AI could also eventually take over the role of judges entirely.

EDITORS CHOICE

• In the essay in Regulatory ReviewCary Coglianese, the Edward B. Shils Professor of Law and director of the Penn Program on Regulation at the University of Pennsylvania, examined potential causes of the decline Chevron doctrine. He claimed that “Chevron “Step Zero” – the initial step to determine whether Chevron structure itself were applicable, it could inadvertently weaken the doctrine by promoting a perception of judicial inaction and the assumption that judicial deference to an agency’s interpretation of a statute would automatically follow from a court’s finding of statutory ambiguity. Coglianese concluded that lawyers and practitioners who accepted the “Stage Zero” terminology, preceding Chevron the two now invalidated steps may have inadvertently contributed to the doctrine’s decline.