The Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority spent several hours Wednesday attacking a longstanding legal doctrine that gives federal agencies wide latitude to create policies and regulations in various areas of life.
The justices heard two cases concerning the so-called Chevron deference, which emerged from a 1984 case. Oral arguments in the first case went well beyond the allotted hour, with the conservatives signaling their willingness to overturn the decades-old case and their liberal colleagues sounding the alarm on how such a reversal would upend how the federal government enforces all kinds of regulations.
Congress routinely writes open-ended, ambiguous laws that leave the policy details to agency officials. The Chevron deference stipulates that when disputes arise over regulation of an ambiguous law, judges should defer to agency interpretations, as long as the interpretations are reasonable.
…
The three liberal justices warned during Wednesday’s pair of arguments that overturning the 1984 decision in Chevron would force courts to make policy decisions that they argue are better left for experts employed by federal agencies.
“I see Chevron as doing the very important work of helping courts stay away from policymaking,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said, adding later: “I’m worried about the courts becoming über legislators.”
The arguments were infuriating. They seemed to forget there are 2 parts to Chevron deference, the first being to see rather or not the agency’s interpretation is reasonable. They seem to think the government can force through some pained stretch of the law when they cannot.
This will literally lead to the opposite, with people arguing outright unreasonable interpretations while claiming ambiguity. And the Republicans-packed judiciary will go right along with it. This is purely about making sure any liberal policy goal can be blocked.
This case should be over with step 1. Is it reasonable that fishermen have to pay 20% of the haul for their monitors? No. Heck, I think, as the program is suspended anyway, the case is moot for the done being and should be dismissed for lack of standing.
The original case was about rather a stationery source of pollution under the Clean Air Act is a whole complex (as the Regan EPA chose to interpret), or individual sources within the complex (as the Carter EPA previously enforced). Both are frankly reasonable, but I’m sure we’ll get some Republican judges ruling that since the Earth revolves around the sun, there is no such thing as a stationary pollution source.
This is fascism
Really? They haven’t won anything. They’ve made progress, they are advancing a genocide against trans people like me and I’m not even this doomery, but the resistance to any destruction of this country will grind it to a hault again and again. They havent won the popular vote in this country in decades.
Get out and vote. Organize and resist. BLM was the biggest civil rights movement in the world. Covid shut this place down. Resistence is as easy as organizing a stay at home day.
And oh look the unions are already planning it. https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/04/business/uaw-next-auto-strike/index.html
Seriously, you should get out, while you still can. The writing is on the wall. Believe it.
it’s what the “conservative” judges are getting paid for
Supreme Court is sending us back to the previous century
Literally, the point of Chevron was that we cannot expect legislators to be as knowledgeable as the experts working at specific agencies. So allow the agencies leeway to act within the scope of the grant authorized by Congress. If Congress sees an overstep, then they can rein in that authority. I would love to hear a well-reasoned argument on why this should be disturbed.
Although, I know it will be overturned and well-reasoned won’t be part of the decision.
