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SCOTUS overturns Chevron - Delivers a Kill Shot to Big Government
[PJ] Also overturned J6 Obstruction Law use. Presidential Immunity decision on Monday
Today, the Supreme Court ruled to overrule the so-called Chevron deference in a 6-3 decision. The ruling is a HUGE victory for those who hate the massive power the administrative state has amassed in recent decades.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, concluded: "Chevron is overruled."

In the most basic terms, the Chevron deference (also called the Chevron doctrine) allows the courts, through a two-step process, to defer to "reasonable" administrative agency interpretations if a federal statute is unclear or ambiguous. It was/is essentially a get-out-of-jail-free card for presidents and agency hacks who liked to claim that a law says whatever they want it to say. It gave federal agencies broad authority to regulate everything from health care to immigration to women's sports to Covid jabs.

According to Ballotpedia:

The principle derives its name from the 1984 U.S. Supreme Court case Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. which concerned disagreement over a change in the Environmental Protection Agency's interpretation of a permitting provision of the Clean Air Act of 1977. The case established a two-step review approach used by courts to analyze an agency's legal interpretations. Under the review process, courts consider (1) Congress' clear intent in passing a law and (2) (if the court finds ambiguities in the law) whether an agency's rule was reasonably construed and not arbitrary, capricious, or manifestly contrary to the statute.

Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog wrote:

Chevron, Roberts explains, [Chevron] "defies the command of" the Administrative Procedure Act, the law governing federal administrative agencies, "that the reviewing court--not the agency whose action it reviews--is to decide all relevant questions of law and interpret ... statutory provisions. It requires a court to ignore, not follow, the reading the court would have reached had it exercised its independent judgment as required by the APA."

Chevron's presumption that statutory ambiguities are implicit delegations of authority by Congress to federal agencies "is misguided," Roberts explains, "because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do."

Roberts notes that today's decision does "not call into question prior cases that relied on the Chevron framework. The holdings of those cases that specific agency actions are lawful--including the Clean Air Act holding of Chevron itself--are still subject to statutory stare decisis despite our change in interpretive methodology."

The high court had consolidated two cases—Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce—and heard oral arguments in January of this year.

Howe reports, "The vote is 6-3 (although 6-2 in Loper-Bright because Jackson is recused). Kagan dissents, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson as it applies to Relentless, from which she is not recused."

Both cases concern the National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS) interpretation of a federal fishing law (George W. Bush's Magnuson-Stevens Act) requiring government monitors to accompany certain fishing boats. At issue: Who would pay for the monitors—the agency requiring them or the fishermen themselves? The statute is unclear on that point, and using the Chevron deference, the lower court ruled that the NMFS had the right to require the fishermen to pay for the $700-a-day monitors on trips that often last several days.

After losing at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the plaintiffs argued before the Supreme Court that the lower court's decision “perceives ambiguity in statutory silence, where the logical explanation for the statutory silence is that Congress did not intend to grant the agency such a dangerous and uncabined authority.” They added, "Whether by clarifying Chevron or overruling it, this Court should grant review and reverse the clear agency overreach at issue here."

Most of us learned in school (I hope!) that the judicial branch interprets the law. It's explained in both Marbury v. Madison and Alexander Hamilton's Federalist 78. The Chevron doctrine takes some of that power to interpret from the courts and hands it to unelected bureaucrats. The word "deference" in Chevron means that the court defers rulemaking to "experts" in the administrative state.
Posted by: Frank G 2024-06-28
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=702596