In a move that will have regulatory agencies across Washington double-checking their job descriptions, the Supreme Court on Friday dealt a rather decisive blow to the long-standing legal precedent known as the Chevron deference, a rule which for four decades generously allowed federal agencies to interpret vaguely worded laws without having to phone Congress every five minutes.
The 6-3 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo effectively yanked the rug out from under the 1984 Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council ruling which had politely suggested that when statutes are ambiguous, courts should defer to an agency’s interpretation unless it is entirely off the rails. In more direct terms, if Congress mumbled something confusing, the EPA could fill in the blanks, and courts would mostly nod along. That is, until Friday.
Chief Justice John Roberts, whose prose continues to walk the fine line between legal lucidity and subtle eye-rolling, penned the majority opinion declaring that courts should now use their own “independent judgment” rather than deferring to the agency experts. Roberts claimed the Chevron precedent has only created uncertainty, apparently overlooking the fact that uncertainty is Washington’s natural habitat.
Justice Elena Kagan, meanwhile, emerged as the patron saint of bureaucratic resilience in a sharp dissent bristling with academic fervor and a whiff of bureaucratic nostalgia. She warned that the decision would hand unelected judges even more power and suggested that interpreting complex regulations may not, in fact, be the judiciary’s strong suit. “Courts are not in the business of making transportation policy,” she noted with the firm tone of someone who has clearly tried to explain this before.
The case at hand involved a group of New Jersey fishermen who balked at being forced to pay the salaries of federal monitors required to ride aboard their boats, a sort of “Big Brother but with sea legs” situation that prompted a legal odyssey which has now ended with a judicial hook yanking Chevron offstage.
“Agencies have expertise and political accountability. Courts have neither,” Kagan wrote, making a point that may now belong in a law school footnote rather than a federal courtroom.
Legal scholars, some of whom have been waiting decades for this moment while others have been bracing for it like a slow-moving regulatory Nor’easter, anticipate that the decision will trigger a wave of challenges to longstanding agency rules and guidance. In other words, if you thought government red tape was a mess before, you might want to sit down.
And while this may be a win for those who distrust what they call the “administrative state,” it also means that every time a federal agency gets creative with its interpretation of a 500-page statute written in committee room hieroglyphics, courts will now feel invited to offer expert opinions on subjects like fisheries management and industrial emissions, with no requirement that anyone involved has ever actually used a fishing net or seen a smokestack up close.
So farewell to Chevron, the misunderstood middle manager of American jurisprudence, who just wanted to clarify things and has now been unceremoniously fired for trying too hard.
If agencies want deference now, they may have to bring cupcakes and a well-cited legal brief.