Supreme Court Ruling Today Upends Government Agency Powers

Today the individual scored a historic victory over government overreach and totalitarian control.

The The Chevron deference was a vast overreach by the administrative state.

The heart of the Chevron decision says federal agencies should be allowed to fill in the details when laws aren’t crystal clear.

Today it was overturned.

Fshermen challenged a National Marine Fisheries Service rule that required them to carry onboard observers to monitor fishing, and pay costs for the observers contracted by NMFS, at up to $700 a day.

The cases hinge on the so-called “Chevron deference,” a landmark ruling in federal administrative law dating back to a 1984 dispute between the oil giant and environmental activists of the Natural Resources Defense Council. In that Supreme Court decision, justices ruled that the courts should “defer” to executive agencies’ reasonable interpretations of federal statutes.

The Chevron deference was a vast overreach by the administrative state.

The Chevron deference has become a cause célèbre among conservative legal groups, who see it as a vast overreach by what they refer to as “the administrative state.”

While the cases are focused narrowly on fishing, the Supreme Court decision could have profound effects across U.S. government and industry, setting new guardrails on regulation of energy, transportation, food and drugs and other health, safety and environmental rulemaking.

The Supreme Court weakens federal regulators, overturning decades-old Chevron decision

Billions of dollars could be at stake as companies are now free to litigate against the federal government over how laws should be enforced.

By: Mark Sherman, i12 News, June 28, 2024:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday upended a 40-year-old decision that made it easier for the federal government to regulate the environment, public health, workplace safety and consumer protections, delivering a far-reaching and potentially lucrative victory to business interests.

The justices overturned the 1984 decision colloquially known as Chevron, long a target of conservatives.

Billions of dollars are potentially at stake in challenges that could be spawned by the high court’s ruling. The Biden administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer had warned such a move would be an “unwarranted shock to the legal system.”

The heart of the Chevron decision says federal agencies should be allowed to fill in the details when laws aren’t crystal clear. Opponents of the decision argued that it gave power that should be wielded by judges to experts who work for the government.

The court ruled in cases brought by Atlantic herring fishermen in New Jersey and Rhode Island who challenged a fee requirement. Lower courts used the Chevron decision to uphold a 2020 National Marine Fisheries Service rule that herring fishermen pay for government-mandated observers who track their fish intake.

Conservative and business interests strongly backed the fishermen’s appeals, betting that a court that was remade during Republican Donald Trump’s presidency would strike another blow at the regulatory state.

The court’s conservative majority has previously reined in environmental regulations and stopped the Democratic Biden administration’s initiatives on COVID-19 vaccines and student loan forgiveness.

The justices hadn’t invoked Chevron since 2016, but lower courts had continued to do so.

Forty years ago, the Supreme Court ruled 6-0, with three justices recused, that judges should play a limited, deferential role when evaluating the actions of agency experts in a case brought by environmental groups to challenge a Reagan administration effort to ease regulation of power plants and factories.

“Judges are not experts in the field, and are not part of either political branch of government,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in 1984, explaining why they should play a limited role.

But the current high court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, has been increasingly skeptical of the powers of federal agencies. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas all had questioned the Chevron decision.

Opponents of the Chevron doctrine argue that judges apply it too often to rubber-stamp decisions made by government bureaucrats. Judges must exercise their own authority and judgment to say what the law is, they argued to the Supreme Court.

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