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“The Supreme Court on Friday cut back sharply on the power of federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer and ruled that courts should rely on their own [interpretation] of ambiguous laws…
“By a vote of 6-3, the justices overruled their landmark 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which gave rise to the doctrine known as the Chevron doctrine. Under that doctrine, if Congress has not directly addressed the question at the center of a dispute, a court was required to uphold the agency’s interpretation of the statute as long as it was reasonable. But in a 35-page ruling by Chief Justice John Roberts, the justices rejected that doctrine.” SCOTUSblog
The left criticizes the decision, arguing that agencies are better equipped than the courts to interpret regulations.
“In the Chevron case 40 years ago, the Court didn't say that federal agencies could just make up their own rules—or that judges couldn't overrule them. Judges can and do overrule agencies all the time. All the Court said is that judges should defer to agencies if (a) the law is ambiguous, (b) the agency's interpretation is a ‘rational’ and ‘reasonable’ one, and (c) the interpretation is reached through formal proceedings…
“It may be, as some people have argued, that the case at hand in yesterday's decision really was an example of egregious overreach by a federal agency. If it was, however, the Court could easily have ruled against the Commerce Department without touching Chevron. They just had to declare that the department's actions weren't a reasonable interpretation of the law.”
Kevin Drum, Jabberwocking
“An error in one of this week’s opinions provided a stark illustration of the costs of the court’s lack of expertise… In the case dealing with the Environmental Protection Agency — Ohio v. E.P.A. — the released version of the majority opinion made five references to ‘nitrous oxide,’ commonly referred to as laughing gas, rather than the ‘nitrogen oxide’ compounds at issue. The error was quickly fixed, but no agency official working on the regulation of this compound would have made such an error…
“[Justice Kagan writes that] ‘While agencies are not directly accountable to the people, the chief executive is.’… ‘Federal judges — who have no constituency — have a duty to respect legitimate policy choices made by those who do.’… In arrogating to itself enormous new authority, the court ensures that it alone will continue to make the most important decisions in our national life. And that’s no way to run a democracy.”
Kate Shaw, New York Times
“How much nitrogen may be discharged by a wastewater treatment plant in Taunton, Massachusetts? Is there ‘effective competition’ between cable TV providers and streaming video providers in Kauai, Hawaii? Does the process of mixing and bagging sand constitute ‘milling,’ which is regulated under the Mine Safety and Health Act, or ‘manufacturing,’ which is regulated under [OSHA]?…
“Federal courts will soon be inundated with lawsuits forcing them to decide questions like these… And there’s simply no reason to think that some guy with a juris doctorate and a judicial commission will know how to handle these questions. Instead of leaving questions about, say, cable TV rates to officials in the Federal Communications Commission who have spent their careers studying those questions, they’ll now be resolved by lawyers who know little, if anything, about telecommunications.”
Ian Millhiser, Vox
The right supports the decision, arguing that it will help rein in the administrative state and return power to Congress.
The right supports the decision, arguing that it will help rein in the administrative state and return power to Congress.
“As Roberts put it, ‘Chevron’s presumption is misguided because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do.’ Federal judges are paid their medium-sized bucks—and, more importantly, given life tenure so as to be free from political pressure—to make the hard calls when laws are ambiguous or otherwise hard to parse…
“Chevron led to agency overreach, haphazard practical results, and the diminution of Congress. Though intended to empower Congress by limiting the role of courts, Chevron instead enabled agencies to aggrandize their own powers to the greatest extent plausible under their operative statutes, and often beyond. Courts, in turn, have gotten lazy in interpreting statutes. It’s become a vicious cycle of legislative buck-passing and judicial deference to executive overreach.”
Ilya Shapiro, City Journal
“The doctrine, minted only in the mid 1980s, never sat comfortably with the traditional power of the judiciary to, in the words of Chief Justice John Marshall, ‘say what the law is.’ Nor was it consistent with the Administrative Procedure Act, passed in 1946, which provided that a court reviewing agency action must ‘decide all relevant questions of law’ and ‘interpret’ the relevant ‘statutory provisions.’…
“Neither [Jarkesy nor Loper Bright prevent] the agencies from exercising powers explicitly granted by Congress, or from pursuing cases that could stand up in court. So the alarms about crippling administrative power are overstated. Nor were these decisions, as the Court’s liberals would have it, a judicial ‘power grab.’ Jarkesy requires judges to share power with juries, and Loper Bright restores the proper primacy of Congress.”
The Editors, National Review
“Now regulators will have a harder time bending laws, and Congress will have to legislate more clearly. Imagine that… Justice Elena Kagan writes in [dissent that] ‘Judges are not experts in the field.’…
“But the progressive impulse to defer to the rule of experts is one reason Americans are so frustrated with government. Some judges may run off the rails, but then some do that now. The crucial constitutional point is that each branch of government stays in its proper lane.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“In more innocent times, the public trusted the professionals in administrative agencies to be honest experts, who would not misrepresent evidence, or hide data, or agree among themselves to lie for political goals. Recent events have shown that trust to be misplaced. The pandemic destroyed that faith, and we no longer trust when we can’t verify.”
Morgan Marietta, Spectator World
A libertarian's take
“Sometimes agencies really do have relevant specialized expertise. But expertise is far from the only factor influencing agency decisions. Partisan and ideological agendas also have a big impact. If Trump returns to power, do left-liberal Chevron fans believe his appointees will scrupulously ‘follow the science’ when they interpret statutes? Or will they have a political agenda that will usually trump (pun intended!) science when the two conflict? The answer seems pretty obvious, at least to me. Partisan and ideological bias aside, many issues handled by agencies are simply impossible to resolve through technical expertise alone. They also involve questions of values.”
Ilya Somin, Volokh Conspiracy
