Supreme Court Pares Back Federal Regulatory Power
Justices abandon 1984 precedent giving agencies leeway to interpret their own powers
By
Jess Bravin
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June 28, 2024 10:35 am ET
WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court upended the federal regulatory framework in place for 40 years, expanding the power of federal judges to overturn agency decisions over environmental, consumer and workplace safety policy, among other areas.
The 6-3 decision, along ideological lines, discards a 1984 precedent directing federal courts to defer to agency legal interpretations when the statutory language passed by Congress is ambiguous. Conservative legal activists, Republican-led states and some business groups have argued in recent years that the 1984 case, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, allows agenda-driven regulators to push the limits of their power.
By abandoning the doctrine called Chevron deference, the justices have given parties unhappy with agency decisions more opportunities to overturn regulations by persuading federal judges that agency officials exceeded their authority.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court. “Agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do,” he wrote, joined by justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Roberts said that a 1946 law setting out the federal rule-making process, the Administrative Procedure Act, required a measure of judicial deference to agency factual and policy determinations, but not to their legal interpretations.
Justice Elena Kagan, in dissent, argued that the majority had damaged the public interest by diminishing the role of expert agencies and diminished the democratic accountability of policy decisions by shifting authority from executive branch officials working for the president to the unelected judiciary.
“A rule of judicial humility gives way to a rule of judicial hubris,” she wrote, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “In recent years, this Court has too often taken for itself decision-making authority Congress assigned to agencies.”
Even before the decision, the conservative-dominated court had been hammering away at federal regulatory power, in opinions that threw out Biden administration policies ranging from public-health measures to contain Covid-19 to a blanket cancellation of student-loan debt. But while the Supreme Court hasn’t cited Chevron for authority in years, many lower courts said they remained bound by the doctrine as long as it remained on the books.
A who’s-who of industry associations and conservative advocacy groups that regularly sue federal agencies have filed many briefs urging the justices to abandon or roll back the decades of deference given to regulators.
“By ending Chevron deference, the court has taken a major step to preserve the separation of powers and shut down unlawful agency overreach,” said Roman Martinez, who represented a fishing boat company called Relentless in one of the regulatory challenges before the court. “Going forward, judges will be charged with interpreting the law faithfully, impartially, and independently, without deference to the government,” he said.
The Justice Department had no immediate comment, but Senate Democrats were disappointed.
“Federal agencies use the latest scientific analyses and expert opinions to implement widely popular programs that ensure safe food and medications, clean air and water, stable financial markets, fair working conditions, and more. With this decision, those programs may now be tied up in court for years by corporate special interests,” said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat.
Although neutral on its face, as a practical matter the decision offers another tool to business interests looking for conservative-leaning federal courts to block environmental, consumer or workplace safety regulations they consider too costly. Reaction Friday broke sharply according to the anticipated beneficiaries of the court’s ruling.
“The Supreme Court’s previous deference rule allowed each new presidential administration to advance their political agendas through flip-flopping regulations and not provide consistent rules of the road for businesses to navigate, plan, and invest in the future,” said Suzanne Clark, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which filed a brief urging the court to overrule Chevron.
Labor’s view was a mirror opposite: “This ruling paves the way for corporate challenges to the actions of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the National Labor Relations Board, and other agencies with a duty to protect workers’ lives and rights, which would allow employers to get away with retaliation, union-busting and maintaining dangerous workplace conditions,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, whose organization filed a brief arguing the court should stand by its precedent.
Friday’s decision brings the Chevron saga full circle. Conservatives initially hailed the Chevron decision, which required the then-liberal leaning federal judiciary to defer to Reagan administration policies rolling back environmental protections.
