The Supreme Court on Friday overturned decades of precedent established in the 1984 case Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, dramatically stripping power back from federal regulators.
In a 6-3 decision, again split along ideological lines, the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron case, which had held that the judiciary should defer to government agencies when the law is unclear.
This makes it much easier for courts to overturn regulations and for judges to give the best interpretation of the law.
“Courts must exercise their own judgment in determining whether an agency acted within the scope of its statutory authority,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “Careful attention to executive branch decisions may aid in that investigation. And when a particular statute delegates authority to an agency subject to constitutional limits, courts must respect the delegation and ensure that the agency acts within its scope.”
“But the court ruled that under the APA [Administration Procedure Act] “Just because the law is ambiguous doesn’t mean we can defer to a government agency’s interpretation of the law.”
