The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision announced Friday, overturned a 40-year precedent that allowed federal agencies to interpret vague laws as part of their regulatory powers.
The ruling encompassed two cases, Relentless Inc. v. Department of Commerce, and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, that had been brought by commercial herring fishing companies, each represented at no charge by antiregulation legal groups. While the cases challenging a National Marine Fisheries Service rule dealt specifically with fisheries management, a broad swath of environmental, consumer and public safety advocates were quick to condemn the ruling and its broader implications.
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Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, held that “the Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, and courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling overturned long-standing precedent, taking decision-making out of the hands of scientists and experts at federal agencies, said the National Wildlife Federation.
“The experience and expertise of experts — scientists, biologists, toxicologists, and others — are essential to implementing our foundational wildlife, public health, and environmental laws. The Supreme Court’s decision sidelines experts at the moment we need them to help safeguard and steward our wildlife, clean air and water, public health, and the environment,” said National Wildlife Federation President and CEO Collin O’Mara. “This ruling overturns long-standing precedent and will limit agencies’ ability to protect public health, address pollution, protect our waters and our ecosystems.”
The 40-year-old Chevron deference, a legal precedent under which courts have been required to defer to agency interpretations of the laws those agencies administer, “even when a reviewing court reads the statute differently,” according to the decision.
Roberts wrote that Chevron was fundamentally misguided, unworkable and had not fostered meaningful reliance.
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“Given the Court’s constant tinkering with and eventual turn away from Chevron, it is hard to see how anyone could reasonably expect a court to rely on Chevron in any particular case or expect it to produce readily foreseeable outcomes. And rather than safeguarding reliance interests, Chevron affirmatively destroys them by allowing agencies to change course even when Congress has given them no power to do so,” Roberts wrote.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Neal Gorsuch each wrote concurring opinions.
Justice Elena Kagan, with whom Justice Sonia Sotomayor and in part, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined in the dissent, wrote that the Supreme Court had long understood Chevron deference to reflect legislative intent.
“Congress knows that it does not—in fact cannot—write perfectly complete regulatory statutes. It knows that those statutes will inevitably contain ambiguities that some other actor will have to resolve, and gaps that some other actor will have to fill. And it would usually prefer that actor to be the responsible agency, not a court. Some interpretive issues arising in the regulatory context involve scientific or technical subject matter. Agencies have expertise in those areas; courts do not,” Kagan wrote.
Jackson was recused from part of the case.
Advocacy groups said the decision makes it easier for big business to block pollution regulations.
The Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, a national advocacy organization composed of consumer, labor, scientific, research, faith, public health and environmental groups, said the court sided again with big corporations that seek to weaken agencies’ regulatory authority.
“The Supreme Court today overturned a decades-old legal precedent that will significantly undermine government experts trying to protect consumers, workers, the environment, and the public’s health and safety,” said Coalition for Sensible Safeguards Executive Director Rachel Weintraub. “The public expects our government to protect us from dangerous products, polluted air and water, unsafe workplaces, and fraudulent markets. This decision will harm all of us for as long as it stands.”
The group said the decision does not remove or weaken federal agencies’ legal authority to protect the public with new and updated rules. It said regulatory inaction would be inexcusable and agencies “must continue to do their jobs protecting consumers, workers, civil rights, our environment, and the public.”
Congressman Greg Murphy, R-N.C., spoke in favor of the decision Friday. He said that that the Supreme Court “dealt a historic blow to Washington bureaucracy by striking down the Chevron deference. In doing so, our courts will now be required to defer to the intent of Congress.”
