WASHINGTON, DC – Federal agencies suffered a major blow to their regulatory powers on Friday when the Supreme Court overturned a ruling. ChevronThe case follows decades of federal courts leaving it up to agencies to interpret the laws they enforce.
When Chief Justice John Roberts was sworn in as the majority opinionIf the court finds that federal law is “silent or vague on a particular issue,” the court may: ChevronSecond, if the agency’s interpretation is based on a permissible interpretation of the statute, we will follow it.”
“Recognizing the limitations of human language and foresight, [those who wrote the Constitution] Roberts explained that he expected that “every new law, even if written with the greatest technical skill and enacted after the most full and mature deliberations, will be more or less obscure and vague until its meaning has been determined by a particular series of arguments and decisions.”
“The Framers also envisioned that the ultimate interpretation of the statutes was the proper and distinctive domain of the Courts,” the 6-3 opinion continued. Marbury v. MadisonChief Justice Marshall stated, “It is the province and duty of the judicial department to determine what the law is.”
“Executive branch views can influence judicial decisions, but they do not override them,” Roberts wrote. “To do otherwise would mean that judicial decisions would not be independent at all.”
“In 1946, Congress enacted the APA. [Administrative Procedure Act] “This decision was designed to prevent executive officials from becoming overzealous in their actions that were not contemplated by the statute that created their offices,” the ruling read. “It was the result of a comprehensive reconsideration of the executive branch’s position in a system of separate and divided powers.”
The APA “provides that courts, not agencies, will decide all relevant questions of law that arise in review of agency actions, even those involving ambiguous statutes, and will strike down actions that contradict the law as they are interpreted,” Roberts continued, “and it does not prescribe the respectful standard courts must employ in answering those legal questions.”
“Respect is Chevron “Provisions requiring courts to review agency actions are inconsistent with the APA,” the justices wrote. “In the decades between the enactment of the APA and this Court’s decision, ChevronCourts have generally continued to review the interpretation of statutes within their jurisdiction by examining each statute independently and determining its meaning.”
“Chevron“represented a significant departure from the traditional approach,” the majority reasoned, when it decided in 1984 with a slim six-justice quorum. “Neither Chevron nor any of the Court’s subsequent decisions have sought to harmonize that framework with the APA.”
“Chevron “This decision runs counter to the APA’s mandate that the reviewing court, not the agency reviewing the act, decide all relevant questions of law and interpret statutory provisions,” Roberts ruled. “It requires the court to ignore, rather than follow, the interpretation it would have reached if it had exercised its own discretion as required by the APA.”
“Courts interpret statutes without regard to context and according to traditional tools of statutory interpretation, not personal policy preferences,” the majority declared. “Indeed, the Framers wrote the Constitution to allow federal judges to rule without influence from the political branch.”
“The only question that remains is, Precedent bindingThe principle of judicial precedent requires us to Chevron “It’s not a project. It’s not,” the majority declared.
Roberts writes:
Precedent binding is not an inescapable imperative, and the precedential binding considerations most relevant here – the quality of the case’s rationale, the enforceability of the rule it establishes, and reliance on the decision – all weigh in favor of freeing Chevron.
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The original Chevron two-step format was so vague and all-encompassing that we had to repeatedly clarify its tenets, and our attempts to do so only made the Chevron even more impractical and turned the original two-step into a dizzying breakdance.
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Chevron was overruled. “As the APA requires, courts must use their own judgment in determining whether an agency acted within its statutory authority,” the Supreme Court concluded. “Careful attention to executive branch decisions may aid in that inquiry… But under the APA, courts need not, and cannot, defer to an agency’s interpretation of the law simply because the law is ambiguous.”
Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch wrote concurring opinions, the latter of which was 34 pages long. Justice Elena Kagan dissented, joined by two other liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
These cases are Roper Bright Enterprises v. RaimondoNo. 22-451, and Relentless v. Department of CommerceNo. 22-1219, U.S. Supreme Court.
Breitbart News senior legal contributor Ken Kurkowski is a former White House and Justice Department lawyer. Follow us on X (formerly Twitter) Kenkrukowski.
