The US Supreme Court on June 28 voted 6-3 to overturn a 40-year legal precedent known as the “Chevron deference,” which gave federal agencies wide powers to interpret laws that they considered unclear and required courts to uphold those interpretations as long as they were considered reasonable.
The ruling, which came in a fight over a fishing-industry regulation, overturned Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, a 1984 decision that Democratic administrations had used as a legal building block for new regulations. In practice, the Chevron doctrine gave federal agencies the freedom to implement rules if Congress passed a law that was ambiguous, and said judges should defer to agency experts in how they interpreted the statutes.
“Chevron was a judicial invention that required judges to disregard their statutory duties,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a 35-page ruling for the majority. He said judges “must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority.”
The court divided along ideological lines, with liberal Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissent. “A longstanding precedent at the crux of administrative governance thus falls victim to a bald assertion of judicial authority,” Kagan wrote for the dissenters. “The majority disdains restraint, and grasps for power.”
Roberts’ opinion took direct aim at the decision penned by Justice John Paul Stevens in 1984, when Stevens argued that “judges are not experts in the field and are not part of either political branch of government,” and should therefore play a limited role.
“That depends, of course, on what the ‘field’ is,” Roberts wrote in his decision. “If it is legal interpretation, that has been, ‘emphatically,’ ‘the province and duty of the judicial department’ for at least 221 years,” Roberts wrote, quoting from the Marbury v. Madison decision that established the Supreme Court as the last word in interpreting laws and the Constitution.
Critics of the Supreme Court’s decision argued that it will constrain environmental, consumer, and financial-watchdog agencies, while supporters said it puts more of the onus on Congress to directly tackle policy issues with new laws and gives judges a broader mandate to rein in regulators when they exceed their authority.
Several industry trade groups issued statements supporting the court’s rejection of the Chevron doctrine, including the Agricultural Retailers Association (ARA). Numerous regulatory decisions by federal agencies in recent years have drawn the ire of industry groups, including efforts by the US EPA under the Obama and Biden administrations to broaden the definition of Waters of the United States under the Clean Water Act.
“For the past 40 years, the Chevron doctrine has provided an opportunity for federal regulatory agencies to expand their regulations beyond the intent of Congress. If Congress was not specific in limiting an agency’s authority in statute, Chevron provided deference to the agency in interpreting its own authorizing statute,” said ARA President and CEO Daren Coppock.
“This decision from the Supreme Court is important because it will require an agency to have specific statutory authority in order to submit private citizens or businesses to a regulatory requirement,” Coppock continued. “We are proud to have been part of the amicus brief filed last year requesting the Supreme Court to consider this case. For our member companies who operate under these regulations, the clarity and certainty that result from this change are very valuable.”