The Supreme Court, in a 6–3 decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, overturned the Chevron doctrine. Functionally, this is a bigger deal than the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Don’t get me wrong, I wrote on the day Dobbs was decided that it was the biggest victory in the history of the conservative movement. Roe was terrible constitutional law in which judges hijacked the democratic process to impose their ideological preferences. It forced states to accept the moral stain of allowing millions of abortions per year no matter what the legislatures, or their people, wanted. The overturning of Roe was a political earthquake. The overturning of the Chevron doctrine, in contrast, will not decide a single race this year.
In terms of the operation of the federal government, however, its effects will be more sweeping.
Since it was decided in 1984, Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. has been central to the massive expansion of the administrative state. By instructing courts to defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of actions on which Congress is not explicit as long as such interpretation is “reasonable,” it left the door open for the government to pursue all sorts of actions without direct permission from Congress. It also led Congress to increasingly shirk its obligations of lawmaking and defer authority to agencies.
This is a huge win for those of us alarmed by the growth of government specifically when it comes to actions taken by the executive branch that have never gone through Congress.