The Supreme Court on Friday issued a ruling overturning the 1984 Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council case, striking down a previous decision that granted federal agencies immensely broad power to draw up regulations without congressional approval.
The Court ruled in both Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless v. Department of Commerce — two nearly identical cases — that regulatory agencies will no longer be able to fill in the blanks of vague legislation in 6-2 and 6-3 decisions, respectively. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself from the first case because she sat on the federal appeals court that had previously heard the case.
In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that it is not the place of agencies to clarify ambiguous legislation.
“Perhaps most fundamentally, Chevron’s presumption is misguided because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities,” he wrote. “Courts do. The Framers, as noted, anticipated that courts would often confront statutory ambiguities and expected that courts would resolve them by exercising independent legal judgment.”
Writing a concurrence, Justice Neil Gorsuch argued that the concept of Chevron deference “undermines” many of the principles on which the United States was founded.
“It precludes courts from exercising the judicial power vested in them by Article III to say what the law is,” he wrote. “It forces judges to abandon the best reading of the law in favor of views of those presently holding the reins of the Executive Branch. It requires judges to change, and change again, their interpretations of the law as and when the government demands.”
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan argued that, because Chevron deference has existed for 40 years, it should continue to exist.
“It has become part of the warp and woof of modern government, supporting regulatory efforts of all kinds — to name a few, keeping air and water clean, food and drugs safe, and financial markets honest,” Kagan wrote, continuing to claim that “Some interpretive issues arising in the regulatory context involve scientific or technical subject matter. Agencies have expertise in those
areas; courts do not.”
The case was brought by a group of New Jersey herring fishermen who objected to a National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) regulation that required them to pay to have at-sea monitors on their boats to ensure they were complying with regulations. Represented by former solicitor general Paul Clement, the plaintiffs argued that the NMFS had overstepped in interpreting environmental law to require the at-sea monitor, a specific issue on which the law was silent.
The opinion will have significant consequences for the operation of the executive branch, severely limiting the ability of federal agencies such as the EPA to crack down on businesses and other private-sector actors who fall afoul of the agencies’ interpretation of vaguely written regulations.